Child Thief (16 page)

‘I don't.'

‘… or to respect you …'

‘I don't care what you think.'

‘… and don't pretend you're not enjoying this. Hunting. The excitement. You're
enjoying
it. I can see it in your eyes; hear it in your voice.'

‘Then make the most of it,' I said, remaining calm. ‘Take advantage of what I know and what I can do. Stop moaning and let me find your daughter. Or do you think you could do it alone?'

Dimitri stared.

‘Now, instead of wasting time with this, have a look that way.'
I pointed north along the line of the trees. ‘See if you can find anything else. Viktor, you go with him.'

‘And me?' Petro asked.

‘You stay with me.'

Dimitri stayed where he was. ‘This isn't a game.'

‘Do you want to find Dariya or not?' I asked him.

‘Of course.'

‘Then go that way and look for her.'

Dimitri hesitated, shook his head once, and turned away. I watched him and Viktor move off before I went back to looking at the marks in the snow.

‘What the hell's wrong with him?' I said.

‘Maybe he feels inadequate,' Petro suggested.

‘Inadequate?' I crouched, took off a glove and felt the tracks, put my finger on the place where the boot sole was damaged, as if I were making a connection with the man who wore it.

‘He doesn't want to rely on you. He wants to be able to do this himself.'

‘He's a farmer.' I stood and shifted my rifle and pack. ‘He grows potatoes.'

‘He's a proud man. And he's Dariya's father. He wants to be able to do what you can do, but he hates you, and that makes him angry.'

I looked at Petro, not sure if I understood what he was saying. ‘I'm doing everything I can to find Dariya. It should be enough for him.'

‘He's always treated you with disrespect and now he needs you. I think he's ashamed he had to ask for your help.'

‘He has a lot of things to be ashamed of, but that isn't one of them.'

‘Maybe you're too hard on him, Papa.'

For a moment I thought how grown-up my son sounded. Almost like Natalia, trying to understand why people did the things they did. ‘I'm not hard on him. Not hard enough.'

‘You—'

‘He killed a man,' I said. ‘He and the others, they hanged a
man right in the middle of our village, and
that's
why he's angry – because this is his fault. While he was murdering the wrong man, the real killer stole his daughter.
That's
why he's ashamed.'

‘I suppose they were afraid.'

‘That's what your mother said, but she knew it wasn't an excuse – just like
you
know.' I took a deep breath. ‘Men like Dimitri are cowards. They stir people's thoughts, swell their anger, and when the mob does something wrong, they distance themselves from it and say it wasn't their fault.'

‘He wasn't alone.'

‘No, but he whipped those people into a frenzy. What happened was
his
fault, and that man they hanged deserved better.' I stared at the blood in the snow. ‘You know, I once saw a mob of revolutionaries turn on their officer in Galicia, and it wasn't much different from what they did to that stranger.'

‘What happened?'

I thought about telling my son what I'd seen. My own unit was refusing to march because the committee hadn't yet made a decision, so our officer had climbed up on an ammunition box and tried to reason with us. When that didn't work he tried threatening us. I could see what was happening – the men beginning to taunt the officer, throw pieces of bread at him, insult him, spit at him – and I told him to go while he still could. The officer refused, so I dragged him down from the box and told him to run, but the men misread my actions and they cheered as the officer stumbled. They moved closer, jeering, pushing him to the ground. I tried to stop them, just as I'd tried to stop Dimitri, but when the first man put his bayonet in him, the others followed, and I could only stand by and watch, as helpless as I had been in Vyriv two days ago.

‘It's not important,' I said to Petro. ‘It doesn't matter any more. We have other things to worry about now. These are their tracks.' I indicated the disturbance in the snow. ‘But it's hard to tell what happened here.'

Petro watched me, perhaps wondering what it was that gave me such a pained expression. ‘Maybe he's tried to confuse us.
Leave a trail in each direction so we don't know which way he went.'

‘Mm. Maybe. But I don't know.' I shook my head. ‘It's as if he wants us to follow him.'

‘What?'

‘It's just a feeling.'

‘But you still think Dariya's all right?'

‘She's a fighter,' I said. ‘Who would think an eight-year-old girl would have such fight in her? Look at all this mess. I think she tried to run from him, push him away maybe, run out into the snow. She went that way.' I pointed at the tracks that led away in the direction Viktor and Dimitri had gone. ‘That's why it's so messy – they were both running. But he caught her and brought her back to this spot before heading across the steppe.'

‘If that's what you think, then why send Viktor over there? Why don't we just go on ahead?'

‘Because I need to be sure there's nothing that way,' I said. ‘And because there's blood. I'm afraid of what we might find over this ridge, and I don't think Dimitri should be here.'

‘Maybe this isn't her blood; maybe it's
his
blood. She might have hurt him.'

‘Let's see if we can find out,' I said as we began following the tracks, cresting the ridge that led out onto the open steppe. ‘These marks were made by people moving quickly. See how the snow is dragged and pushed rather than pressed underfoot?'

Petro followed, both of us walking twenty metres or so out onto the steppe where the land swept away on all sides, open and clear. Here, out in the open, we came to another area where the snow was disturbed.

And here there was more blood.

Like before, it was concentrated mainly in one place, but there were also spots of it splattered around the surface of the snow.

I could sense Petro waiting for an answer.

‘I don't know what to say,' I told him. ‘There's no way of knowing whose this is. No way. But it looks like someone had a
fight. Like a bloodied nose or … I don't know … like someone's been spitting blood.'

‘Maybe he hit her.'

I shook my head and turned to look at the place we'd just come from; survey the line of trees behind us. ‘It looks wrong.'

‘What?'

‘It's not right. As if someone intended to make this mess here. Back there, that looks to be where something happened, but here?' I searched for an answer. ‘This here looks
de liberate
.'

‘I don't understand.'

‘I'm not sure I do either, but whatever happened here, they went that way.' I stared out at the land ahead. ‘I'm sure of it.'

‘Doesn't he get tired?' Petro asked.

‘Are you tired?'

‘A little.'

‘Then he will be too. Don't worry; we'll catch him.' I took my binoculars and scanned the clear expanse of white, broken only by a single line of tracks. To the left and right, the country looked almost identical. In the distance, perhaps four hundred metres away, there was a low hedge, almost buried on this leeward side. The snow had drifted against it, piled thick and heavy, and I could just about make out the place where the tracks led to it. Beyond that another stretch of open steppe before more trees.

And as I watched, something caught my eye. A movement. Not much, but enough to make me look again. A slight disturbance in the natural order.

‘You see something?' Petro asked.

I focused on the spot, inspecting every inch of the land, then began to sweep the binoculars from side to side, looking for anything that broke the clean lines of the snow. A bird in flight low over the steppe, or on the ground searching for food. A rabbit, a wolf, anything. Perhaps a man leading a child.

I watched, expecting more movement but seeing nothing.

‘Is there something there?' Petro strained to see into the distance. ‘You see something?'

I took the lenses away from my eyes and stared out at the
steppe hoping to sense movement again. ‘I don't know. I thought I saw something. Maybe a bird.' I continued to watch a while longer. ‘Must be all this snow playing tricks on my eyes.' But I was sure there had been something.

If it had been a man leading a child, perhaps I'd had a glimpse of their movement as they entered the treeline in the distance, beyond the hedge. At this distance, with the snow as it was, maybe that's what I had seen. Not something close to the hedge, but something further away. That would explain why I couldn't see it now.

Petro looked up at the sky, turning, seeing the grey clouds moving in from the west. ‘I think it might snow,' he said.

‘You're right; we need to go,' I agreed, telling Petro to move forward with me, away from the blood, before I called to the others to join us.

‘Dimitri doesn't need to see more blood,' I told my son. ‘Keep this to yourself for now.'

Viktor and Dimitri arced in from where they had been searching.

‘Anything?' I asked.

‘Nothing,' Viktor said.

Dimitri shook his head. ‘No sign.'

‘Looks like they went this way, then. He'll be headed for those trees, trying to keep out of the open.'

‘We're wasting time,' Dimitri said. ‘Let's go.'

‘And he's still not trying to cover his tracks,' Viktor said.

‘No way of doing it,' I told him, and I wondered if the man knew we were following him; wondered why he wouldn't try to hide himself. ‘It looks like it might snow again. Maybe he's hoping it'll cover his tracks. In the forest that would take longer, but out here his prints will be gone in minutes.'

‘Then we have to move faster,' Dimitri said. ‘We haven't time to stand around.'

‘Or maybe …' And then I understood why the child thief hadn't tried to cover his tracks. I understood why the disturbance in the snow had been staged here, on this side of the ridge.

The child thief had
expected
someone to follow him. This was his game. We were following him just as the man who had come to the village yesterday had been following him. But we hadn't just been following, we had been led. Whoever had taken Dariya had brought us to this place: left a clear trail and enticed us out into the open to stand on a ridge, four dark figures against a perfect white background.

And as the realisation struck, so Dimitri jerked beside me. A sudden movement and he fell to his knees, a plume of blood puffing out behind him. He tottered for a second, his head turning to look up at me, his eyes wide in wonder, his mouth open as if he were about to speak, but all that emerged was a rush of breath. And then the sound of a crack reached us, carried by the wind, and Dimitri fell forward onto his face.

‘What the hell—' Petro started to say, but I stepped over Dimitri, grabbed Petro's shoulder and shoved him to the ground, shouting at Viktor to get down.

‘Lie flat.' I dropped onto my stomach, pressing low. I felt the air over my head change in a way that was impossible to understand and I heard the zip of something moving through it at speed. Somewhere behind us a bullet smacked into the field and, once more, a sharp crack cut into the late morning.

‘What's going on?' Viktor asked. ‘What the
hell
is going on?'

‘He's shooting at us,' I said. ‘He's shooting at us.'

‘What? Who?'

‘Drew us out into the open. That's why he didn't cover his tracks. That's what I saw. He was waiting for us to come out into the open.'

I looked at Dimitri, whose face was turned towards me, his mouth biting at the snow as he tried to draw breath. I could hear the wheezing gasp of a chest wound, the gurgle of blood in his throat as my brother-in-law gagged and grasped at his own soul. His face carried a confused expression. Even in his last moments of life he wouldn't understand what had happened. One moment he'd been standing, and the next he was on his face, drowning in his own blood, unable to keep the air in his body. I held his eyes
for a moment, seeing the fear that consumed him. Blood had begun to leak out of him, pooling around his chest, melting into the snow.

When I looked away from his eyes, glancing across his body, I saw the place where the bullet had exited his back. A hole in the fabric of his coat, the tattered strands of fabric torn outwards, tipped with flecks of blood and tissue from the body it had sought to protect from the cold weather. I stared at the hole and thought about the way he had fallen without a sound. It had been a good shot, probably at the limit of the accuracy of the rifle that had fired it. No. Not a good shot. It had been a
perfect
shot. I was sure the bullet had struck Dimitri exactly where the shooter had wanted.

It was not a shot intended to kill immediately. I'd seen men shot this way before. I remembered that the first German sharpshooters we had encountered – armed with magnifying scopes and silent tactics – had used a similar technique. They used camouflage and patience, steel masks and a well placed bullet to wound men with the intention of drawing out further targets. They enticed us out to try to save our comrades, and I was sure that's what this man was doing now.

‘Stay as low as you can' I said. And as I spoke, something hit the ground beside me, pummelling into the snow, kicking it up in a small plume.

‘He's fixed on us.' I looked across at my sons. ‘We have to move away.'

Petro was breathing hard. He was looking to me for answers, perhaps an easy way out of this.

‘Stay calm,' I told him, but I knew it was almost impossible.