The Concubine's Secret (16 page)

At each end of the bridge an elaborate wrought-iron lamp attempted to shed a circle of light, but both were losing the battle and they were barely visible in the sheets of snow that clogged the air. The wind snatched at Alexei’s hat and drove fingers into his eyes but he didn’t move. He breathed in shallow gasps behind his scarf. When something brushed against his shin he jumped, heart in his throat, so focused was he on the bridge, but it was only a scrawny cat seeking warmth.

Half an hour passed. An hour. Still no one on the bridge. He and the cat kept each other company but his thoughts grew chill and slippery, so that he almost missed it. A figure was moving up ahead. It was leaning into the wind, hunched in a
fufaika
with a scarf wound tightly round its head and much of its face. It might be Vushnev. Or it might not. More to the point, the figure was alone. Alexei scratched the cat’s head in farewell and moved out from his spot. He covered the ground quickly with long strides, coming up behind his quarry and tapping the snow-draped shoulder. The man swung round, startled, eyebrows heavy with ice above frightened eyes. It was Vushnev.

‘For fuck’s sake, you scared me!’

‘You’re late,’ Alexei pointed out.

‘So what? I was busy. I had to-’

The grey eyes were wary but no longer frightened. Alexei didn’t like that. It made him nervous. ‘Let’s get this over with,’ he interrupted. ‘I’m too cold to hear your bloody life story.’

The man backed off a step and glanced the length of the bridge. Alexei felt a chill that had nothing to do with the bitter cold.

‘I’m looking for someone,’ he said quickly.

‘Name?’

‘Jens Friis.’

‘Russian?’

‘No, he’s Danish. Remember it?’

‘Do you realise how many names I-’

‘Do you recognise it?’

Silence, except for the howl of the wind. Alexei brushed snow from his face.

‘I might,’ the man muttered at last.

‘How much to remember?’

‘What are you offering?’

From an inside pocket Alexei drew out a flat leather jewellery box. He flicked it open. An exquisite sapphire necklace nestled in a creamy satin bed and he heard Vushnev’s intake of breath. He snapped the case closed. The necklace had been his grand-mother’s, worn to Tsar Nikolas’s grand balls at the Winter Palace. The thought of it in this man’s grubby hand made him angry.

‘So do you know Jens Friis?’

‘I know the name.’

‘He’s in Trovitsk camp?’

‘What’s he to you?’

‘That’s none of your damn business.’

‘Sometimes I like to know why my…’ He smiled. ‘Why my clients are so keen to extract one of the inmates, when very often the prisoner has become a different person from the one they used to know. Are you ready for that? Years of hard labour and degradation change them, you see. Life in the camp makes them hard and selfish and only interested in…’

He’s stalling me. Keeping my attention off-

He swung round but it was too late. Shit! A blow thudded into his kidneys, another into the side of his head. He staggered but kept his foothold on the ice. He jammed an elbow into a face and a knee in a groin and gained himself some breathing space, but in front of him stood four men. Two more behind him and another crumpled in a groaning mess on the ground. Vushnev was smiling, standing well clear of any violence.

‘My friend,’ the office manager said softly, ‘you have no choice. I shall take the necklace anyway. And anything else you are hiding. Don’t refuse,’ he chuckled, ‘or I shall have to unleash my friends here. Surely you don’t want that.’

With no more than a small movement of his wrist, a gun appeared in Alexei’s hand and he pointed it directly at Vushnev’s face. ‘You didn’t think I’d come unprepared, did you?’

Vushnev edged backwards. The other men stood their ground.

‘Vushnev, don’t be a fucking fool. You can take the jewels. But in exchange I want-’

The knife came out of the darkness behind him. Pain tore through his body and it was so total, so mind-scouring, he could-n’t work out where it was hurting. Hands and feet were suddenly all over him, beating and kicking, hammering his body to the ground. He pulled the trigger twice, three times and heard screams, but the hands were still burrowing through his clothes, tearing at them, and he couldn’t stop them. He fought till he felt someone’s wrist snap and fingers go limp, but suddenly he was hoisted up into the air and launched over the edge of the bridge parapet. Out into the night air above the river.

All he felt at first was a rush of relief. He was free of those bastards on the bridge. The night was so dark he was barely aware of plummeting, but his mind kicked in and told him to prepare. He drew in his flailing arms and legs, clutched at one last fading image of his sister. Then the water rose up and smacked into him like a brick wall, its freezing force squeezing him so hard his lungs jammed. He sank like a stone.

Six days. No word from Alexei for six long days.

It was obvious her brother had abandoned her. Lydia felt utterly bereft. She prowled the streets of Felanka in search of his tall upright frame with its neat brown hair and long arrogant stride, but there was no sign of him. As each day passed, her fears hardened. Lydia became certain that he’d gone out to the prison camp after he’d discovered some information the evening he trawled the bars. He was acting on it without her.

I work better without you.

That’s what he’d said. He’d made it clear when he stood in her doorway, irritated by her request to join him, so he’d sneaked off to the prison camp, probably in some truck whose driver he’d bribed. He would find their father and somehow whisk him out of Russia before she’d even contacted him, and Jens Friis would think she didn’t care and would go riding on horseback with Alexei in the woods again, while she…

She put a hand over her mouth to stop the words. She needed to find Jens before he disappeared, urgently needed to ask him things. Papa, wait for me, please. I haven’t abandoned you.

‘Don’t go.’

‘I’ll be all right, Elena.’

‘Huh!’

‘I can take care of myself.’

Elena responded with a scowl. ‘You’re good at pretending you can, you mean. But not as good as you think you are.’

Lydia blew out a puff of impatience, her breath coiling a long lazy loop in the cold bright air. They were at Felanka railway station, squeezed on to a platform that was thick with uniforms as soldiers in transit awaited a train with a degree of patience that left Lydia baffled. Her own limbs were restless, her heart beating with an urgency that kept her on the move, up and down from one end of the platform to the other, squirming a path through the crush of bodies. The place had been transformed into male territory, with deep voices and loud masculine laughter stamping ownership on the cold ground. It even smelled different.

Soldiers were sprawled out or seated on their army packs when Lydia passed them, their eyes at a level with her hips. They stared hard. Some even put out a hand and fingered her ankle, or tipped a head back to brush against her skirt as if by accident. But it was no accident that Elena trudged behind her, whacking her umbrella down on the head of anyone who touched Lydia. It made Lydia smile. Even her own mother wouldn’t have done that. It took nerve.

‘You certainly know how to handle men,’ Lydia said.

‘I’ll need to know how to handle Liev when he finds out you’ve gone off on a train on your own.’

‘I queued three days for this ticket.’

‘Tell him that yourself.’

‘I never see him now except when he’s asleep.’

‘That’s because he’s out day and night searching for news of your blasted brother.’

‘I know.’

Lydia could imagine him trawling the bars, drinking and fighting in the lonely back streets in order to glean a whisper of what had happened to Alexei. Oh Popkov, you don’t even like the man.

‘I’ll be back,’ she promised, ‘before he even notices I’m gone.’

This time Lydia was prepared. She knew what to expect. Her breath misted the train’s window and she dragged her coat sleeve down it to rid the glass of moisture. She wanted nothing –
nichevo
– to come between herself and what lay out there.

Dense waves of pine forest rolled past, the dark branches edged with fingers of snow that sparkled in a million ripples of sunlight, deceiving any casual observer into believing the air outside was warm. But Lydia knew better. There were many things she was learning to know better.

The train compartment was full and she was the only female. You knew that’s how it would be. So don’t moan, don’t whine. Nevertheless it was claustrophobic. There were two rows of seats facing each other, and above their heads the luggage nets were weighed down with bulging army packs which looked far too heavy for the flimsy mesh. Most of the occupants were soldiers, wrapped in their greatcoats that smelled of tobacco, all too cumbersome for the small space. Their boots were too big and their jokes too loud. Only two of the men were not in uniform, but one was asleep and had pulled his flat cap down over his face, seemingly deaf to the noise. The other, seated directly opposite Lydia next to the window, was wearing a smart pinstriped suit and a stylish fedora. He checked his fob watch at regular intervals but Lydia had a feeling it was more to display its jewelled face than to discover the hour. The fifth time he lifted it from its home in his waistcoat pocket, looping its heavy gold chain around his thumb as he inspected it, Lydia could resist no longer. She leaned forward.

‘Excuse me, may I see it?’

‘Of course, young comrade.’

Both of them knew it wasn’t the time she was interested in. He shifted forward in his seat and his gloved hand cradled the watch in the small space between them. Quietly, thoughtfully, she studied its engraved dial, raised a hand and ran a finger along the curve of its gold case.

‘
Ochen krasivye
. It’s beautiful.’

‘
Spasibo.’

In the dingy carriage the watch gleamed like a splash of sunlight and other eyes observed it with interest. The man was a fool to flash it around. It wouldn’t take much. She could stand up when the train was entering her station, stumble against him as it jerked to a halt and have the watch neatly in her pocket as she slipped on to the platform. Easy as taking coins from a blind beggar.

She sat back and closed her eyes, an unexpected warmth seeping into her blood, so intense she could feel her cheeks start to burn. Where was it coming from? She thought about it carefully and decided it was the watch. Not this passenger’s watch but another one, even finer, years ago. The memory of the weight of it in her hand tumbled into her mind, a memory she didn’t even know she possessed, and she found herself smiling without knowing why. And then the memory opened, blurred around the edges but still there.

Papa in his heavy travelling cape, the collar turned up round his ears, the lining of dark green silk swirling like pond water as he paced the room.
What room?
She tugged at the memory and at first nothing came, but then she had the impression of a high ceiling, heavy furniture and books.
That’s it.
Books climbing all the way up the walls. Papa’s library. Papa with his watch in his hand, green eyes impatient, fiery curls creeping over the cape’s collar; every part of him eager to be on the move. Even now all these years later she could feel that swirl of energy and the ache in her own small chest.

‘Don’t go, Papa,’ she’d begged, fighting tears, pushing them away, cramming them back where they came from.

Immediately he was at her side, kneeling, arms around her. She’d breathed in quickly to keep the scent of his wood-smoke cape safely inside her.

‘I’ll be back soon,
malishka
,’ he crooned and soothed her unruly hair, the mirror image of his own. ‘Just a couple of weeks.’ All the lines of his face melted into a wide smile for her and he kissed her forehead. ‘It’s work,’ he said. ‘I have to go to Paris. But if your mother doesn’t come downstairs soon, I’ll have to go to the station without you.’

‘No!’ she’d wailed. Waving goodbye to Papa was a ritual.

‘Listen,’ he said to comfort her, and held his watch to her ear.

The tick, she could suddenly remember the sound of the gentle tick. Its voice was a soft whisper that enchanted her, so that her eyes grew wide and her heart-shaped face became absolutely still as she concentrated.

‘It talks,’ she breathed.

‘Here, feel it.’

He placed it in her hand, filling the whole of her palm, and she was astonished at the weight of it.

‘It’s gold,’ he explained.

She studied it carefully, the intricate engraving, the filigree work as fine as one of her hairs, and when he turned it over and opened the back she was entranced by the movement of the tiny cogs. This was where it hid its voice.

‘I thought you had a train to catch, Jens.’

It was her mother’s voice, teasing him, holding a hand out as if her skin could not bear to be without his touch for a moment longer. Her dark hair danced loosely around her shoulders, just the way he liked it. Papa stood up straight and tall, and Lydia watched it happen. Just as it always did. Papa would come home grumpy or impatient or weary and then he’d lay eyes on Mama and it set something alight inside him. It burned away the grumpiness and the impatience and the weariness.

Her mother gently removed the watch from her grasp and gave it back to Papa, murmuring, ‘She’s too young to play with it.’ But Papa gave Lydia a secret smile and winked at her. And then everything was a rush and a bustle and they were at the station, full of sounds and smells, shouts and mountains of luggage. And tears. Lydia realised that this was where adults came to cry. Papa hugged them, kissed them and climbed on to the train, calling out last words from the open window as it hauled itself down the track in a giant bellow of steam. Something red. She pulled at the memory but it was hazy, yet she was sure she could recall something red. And then it came to her. A red handkerchief fluttered from his hand, up and down, until it became no more than a tiny spot. Like a tiny speck of blood.