Through Every Human Heart (11 page)

The toilet was clean, but small. No manufacturer's name. She'd collected toilets as a child, calling out to her mother, ‘It's a Twyfords, Mummy,' or whatever it was. Paul was terribly enthusiastic about bathrooms and toilets. There were around two hundred and forty different manufacturers of toilets in the UK, apparently. ‘Memorise that, Dina. It's bound to come up in a pub quiz sometime,' he said. So she had, but it hadn't yet.

There was room in this one to sit down, stand up and turn around, but anyone over a size sixteen would have had serious problems. The urgent business done, she let her sore hands soak in hot water again for several minutes. What had possessed her to mention her failure at sport? How unreal it had been, talking to him like that, eating cheese scones as if nothing was wrong, as if they were just two ordinary people, passing the time.

He'd almost sounded sorry himself for Lazslo, the one who had nothing good to say about
him.
And he'd said her name was pretty. No one in the world had ever said that. Maybe she'd been a bit harsh, calling him a headless chicken.
God help me, the only man who's ever told me my name was pretty, and he has to be a priest.

Not great, she thought, studying her reflection, but it would do. Whatever happened would happen, she told herself, but at least she looked less like a fool. She'd never reach the heights of Irene's elegance, but at least she looked clean.

Irene. How could she have lost sight of Irene? Where was she? Why had she left them? On the other hand, she was probably all right. Irene was a take-charge person. Irene didn't panic, she let other people do the panicking. She would be all right. It was not knowing, that was the problem.

Feliks wasn't at the table. Wasn't anywhere.

One of the women behind the counter smiled at her and pointed to the door. She went outside. There he was. Another man with him. They both turned at the sound of the door. Feliks held out something, a small laminated card.

‘He says his name is Frank Gibson. He says he works for a newspaper.'

She looked at the card without seeing it.

‘I want your story,' the dark-haired man said. ‘I want the exclusive. The scoop. That's how I make . . .'

‘I told you. There is no story here,' Feliks interrupted him.

‘Trust me, I'm naughty. I listen in to the police frequencies. I'm willing to help you, if you promise to fill me in on the parts . . .'

‘Leave us alone. We don't need help.''

‘Look, why don't you and the lady talk it over?' the man said, and he moved a few yards away.

Feliks ran his hand over his face and forehead, disordering his hair. ‘What do you want to do?' he asked.

‘Me? Am I making the decisions now?'

‘I did not say that. I ask what do you want. Do you believe him?'

‘Do you?'

He shook his head. ‘However I am asking myself, all this time, why are the police not here. And how has this man found us when they have not?'

She had no answer either.

‘If I ask this fellow to let us use his phone, to telephone the police to come here for us, will you stay this time, until they come? We only do harm if we run anymore.'

The café's got a phone, we could have asked to use it, she thought, but perhaps he didn't want to involve other people, or upset them. Or possibly he wanted to save his battery.

‘Could we try to phone Irene as well? Or first. I mean, if we can tell the police where she is, show them we're being helpful . . .'

‘Yes, that is a good idea.'

Hopefully Irene would be all right, and everything would be cleared up. She said, ‘I'm going to tell them none of it was your fault.'

‘Good,' he said, reaching towards her hair. She stiffened, then relaxed as he held it out. A tiny green fly. He blew it off into the breeze.

‘Such a pity,' he said.

‘What?'

‘That we cannot grow wings.'

‘Do you have a phone? We would like to make a call before we talk to you further,' he told the dark-haired man.

‘No problem.'

To get a signal they had to clamber quite far up the high slope behind the building, right up to a barbed wire fence. The reporter waited beside his car, not even watching them.

‘Better you should talk to them. Sometimes I am slow with the accents,' he said.

‘Could I just try Irene first?'

Why not? There was a breeze up here, bending the grass, blowing her hair into her eyes. She turned to face into it. He found a smooth place on a nearby boulder, and watched her. He liked it that she had thought of Irene. She was irrational, vain and most irritating, but there was some good in her. The sun moved behind a cloud. He zipped his jacket higher. This country was cold at its heart.

‘It's just the answering message,' she said.

‘Try again. Ask where she is, and say that we need her. Say we have a car.'

‘Do we?'

‘In a fashion,' he pointed to the reporter below.

At last. ‘This is Dina,' the girl said, repeating it more loudly. But her face crumpled.

‘What is wrong?' He got up from his rock.

‘It's him,' she mouthed. She meant the suited blond fellow. It was the possibility he'd been refusing to consider.

‘No, they're not,' the girl answered. Then, reluctantly, ‘Yes, he is.'

‘He wants you,' she held out the phone.

‘How clever of you to find this number.' His enemy's voice was so close, as if he was right there. ‘Dina tells me that you haven't been stopped by the police. Is that true?'

‘Let me speak to Miss Arbanisi,' Feliks said, putting a hand on the fence post to steady himself.

‘I don't think so. She's right beside me, and she's safe now. You'll never get the chance to hurt a hair of her head.'

‘I don't mean to hurt anyone. You are the one who does. Let me speak to her, right now.'

‘Over my dead body, pal. And you can swear at me all you like, you'll never get her.'

Swear? When had he sworn?

‘Who are you? Who are you working for? For my father?'

‘Now you're talking sense. Of course we can meet. I was about to suggest it myself. Your colleague is with us, by the way. He was a little agitated, but he's fine now.'

Did he mean Lazslo? Why was Lazslo with them?

‘That won't be possible, sorry.'

What wouldn't be possible? He hadn't said anything. The man was crazy.

‘Listen to me. We are about to speak to the police. If you harm Miss Arbanisi or my colleague . . .'

‘Oh, bad, bad idea. Don't do that. Don't speak to them. Drive north. Phone us again in an hour, and we'll arrange somewhere to meet. And bring Miss MacLeod with you, unharmed.'

‘She has nothing to do with this.'

‘Miss Arbanisi wants to be sure you haven't maltreated her in any way before I let you have your friend back.'

‘But she is here. She can talk to Miss Arbanisi now. She is free to do whatever she likes . . .'

The phone went dead.

‘What did he say? Is she with him? Is she all right?'

He'd been gripping the wire. A line and two small puncture wounds dotted his palm.

‘He talks like a crazy man, then he talks sense. I don't understand it. He tells me to drive north . . .'

‘North? Why?'

‘I don't know. He says he has Lazslo too.'

‘No.'

‘He says they are both all right.' But it might all be lies. Lazslo and Miss Arbanisi could be dead or dying . . .

“You're bleeding,” she said.

He sucked his hand briefly, passing the phone to her, and held his palms together.

‘What are we going to do?' she asked at last.

What could he tell her? He had absolutely no ideas in his head, except one. The man so good-looking, so well-dressed, so strange in conversation was, exactly as he'd suspected, a man completely lacking in conscience. As a teenager, he'd watched one or two try to attach themselves to his father. They made a strong impression, then they just weren't around anymore. Dimitar had explained why. Boris recognised the risks they posed. According to Dimitar, there were some men, and women too, in the world who were by nature indifferent to beauty and ugliness, goodness and evil. ‘There is no loyalty in them,' he'd signed, ‘nor can they change.'

‘We should not accept this man's help,' Feliks said, looking down to the journalist. ‘No matter what he says he is.'

She was wilting, he saw, like a plant too long without light.

‘We can let him take us back to our car. All right?'

He supported her on the way down the rock-strewn slope, and this time she seemed content to take his arm.

Lazslo cradled his arms around his aching head in the boot of the stranger's car. They had stopped for a few moments, but all too soon they were moving again. So the end was not yet. They would have to stop sometime, he told himself. Although it was undeniable that a car could stop in all sorts of ways. A car could be left to rust in the middle of a forest. A car could be set on fire, or pushed over a bridge into an icy stream.

He couldn't recall a time when he'd been more miserable. Not that he was really surprised. It was the story of his entire life. Bad timing, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, doing what he was told because he had no choice. If the blond man had come alone, or dressed in workman's clothes as he had been before, he would have known what to do. But to see him stepping out of the Lexus, all smiles, with an elegant beautiful woman on his arm, just as he himself emerged with his pants half-zipped, that had been a filthy rotten trick on the part of Fate.

She'd disappeared into the tower, and the man had waved to him.

‘How are you? No problem finding the place? So sorry about the mix-up yesterday,' the man had begun, taking his arm, but within a split second, he'd produced a knife, urging Lazslo to be very good, and promising to do certain things with the knife if he was bad. And of course, of Feliks there had been no sign whatsoever. So now here he was, in pitch darkness, with an unbelievably sore stomach from the punch that had knocked the sense out of him before he'd been pushed into the boot. He'd felt all around inside the space the best he could to see if there was anything that could help him. There was a small holdall, leather by the smell of it. It contained clothes, a woman's clothes, underwear that felt like silk. There was something attached to the underside of the boot lid, a small, metallic, square thing. It came away easily. He put it in his pocket in case it might prove useful.

Judging from the gentle swaying and the lack of traffic noise, they were now on a main road, but out in the countryside. Now and then they overtook something without using much acceleration. Clearly they were travelling faster than other cars. Were they being followed? Perhaps Feliks was following them. He'd managed to drop the keys to their own car in what he hoped was an obvious place at the edge of the grass. Suppose Feliks found them, and was now by some miracle following. It would take a miracle, since as far as Lazslo knew, he had never got his nerve back after the crash.

It was about time Feliks did something right. He'd brought the girl with them, instead of believing her story and letting her go. Stupid decisions every time. Of course it was possible that Feliks had also been caught, that he was a prisoner inside the car.

Abruptly they stopped. He hit the back wall. The daylight was momentarily blinding.

‘Get out.'

He fell to his knees onto wet rutted earth. The man caught his collar and yanked him to his feet. The beautiful woman was standing a little distance away, staring straight ahead, as if none of this interested her. He glanced inside the car. No one else there. No traffic in sight either.

‘Why are you . . .?' he began, but the blond man silenced him with a slap across the mouth.

‘Move,' he ordered, pointing to a culvert under a stone arch. Once beneath it, the man said, ‘Face against the wall, hands on your head.'

He did as he was told. The wall was wet, slimy with moss. He could taste blood, where the soft flesh of his inside lip had caught his teeth. The man tapped his head with what felt like the heavy end of the knife. He winced.

‘Does it hurt? I do hope so. Your boyfriend keeps trying to hurt me every time we meet. Or were you the one who stabbed my colleague?'

‘I only drive the car. I have no choice.'

The man laughed. ‘Oh we always have a choice. From the moment those bright little sunbeams wake us every morning, we have a choice. For example, you could choose not to tell me a number of things I want to know. On the other hand, since they do make life so much easier, you could choose to keep all of your fingers.'

He was so close Lazslo could smell him. He was wearing scent, like a woman.

‘Who are you working for?'

There didn't seem much point in lying.

‘The President.'

‘President of what?'

‘My country.'

The man professed never to have heard of it. Was this a bluff, or did he really not know? There was no way to tell by his voice, which sounded English with no trace of an accent.

‘It is between Bazakestan and the Soviets.'

Should he volunteer more information? Or was it safer to sound like an ignorant driver who barely spoke the language, who knew nothing of any importance? Which wasn't entirely false. ‘Go with my son. Drive carefully. Remember everything. Do what he tells you,' Boris had told him. But no explanation of why the Arbanisi woman was important or what purpose her return might serve.

‘How many are there of you?'

‘Not many. Perhaps six millions.'

‘
Here
, you fool. Who else is here with you?'

‘Berisovic and I. That is all. He speak to people. I drive car. He cannot drive car. He has once a bad crash, he . . .'

‘Forget the bloody car. That ring he gave her, is it real?'

‘Ring? I don't know about a ring,' Lazslo began. Abruptly his jaw was caught, turned sideways. There was a swift sensation like a thread being drawn across his cheek, and a stinging pain.

‘Keep them on your head!' the man snapped, as he dropped one hand to feel confusedly for his face. ‘Not that your opinion matters,' he went on. ‘The lady says it's real, and I suppose she's the type of lady who'd know. Closer to my heart at this moment is the matter of who you've told about yesterday. I'd like to know, before the police do. And please don't tell me you've told nobody, because I won't believe you.'

‘Not me. Berisovic. He is a crazy man, he . . .'

‘Who else knows what happened?'

‘He does the talking. He doesn't tell me. I think maybe you must ask him.'

‘Calm down, or you'll shake yourself out of your pants again. So, you're just the poor little man with no choice. Just the driver. You don't know what's going on, you should be safe at home in your own little bed? You must be wondering what the hell this is all about.'

‘No, I don't ask . . .'

‘You don't ask?'

‘No. I just . . .'

‘You just drive the car.' The man finished the sentence for him, with a short laugh.

‘All right then, off you go.' He pulled Lazslo round.

He stared, not understanding.

‘You can leave. I mean it. I don't want you. As far as I'm concerned you can disappear. As long as you tell no one about our little chat. You'd better get moving if you want to reach civilisation before dark. Off you go.' He gestured to a track that led out from under the culvert, landward, away from the road.

Bewildered, Lazslo began to walk, stumbling a couple of times over the hummocky grass in the middle of the track. He managed a cigarette out of the pack and lit it without stopping. Where the track forked, he took the higher one, which led into a sparse birch wood. The trees gave way to bracken. The way rapidly grew steeper until he began to feel his heart pumping, but he didn't stop, until finally he found himself with nowhere to go, high above the dark grey ribbon of a road. He couldn't tell if he was ahead of the place where the car had stopped, or behind it, or even if this was a different road entirely. It didn't matter. At some point he would have to think about what mattered and what didn't, but not yet.

On the far side of the road a movement caught his eye. A goshawk, he thought at first, but really it was too small. It settled on a telegraph pole, and looked at him, then almost at once flew away. He'd liked birdwatching at home, and Grandma encouraged it. She liked him out of the house. He'd kept a notebook for a time, with drawings. Honey Buzzards with their white black-spotted breasts, different woodpeckers, Spotted Eagles, and all the songbirds, Goldcrests, Firecrests, Crossbills, Serins. His first set of coloured pencils had been wonderful, then immediately annoying, because the colours weren't right for the actual colours. Eagles, he recalled, could see eight times better than people, but they failed in their hunting almost three quarters of the time, which was . . .

Something hit his head, and he was falling, tumbling down, crashing into bushes and boulders till he hit hard ground. He couldn't move, though the world itself was moving in circles. Worse than the pain was the strange overwhelming heaviness. He tried to speak, but no sound came out, and the feebleness of his mouth frightened him. All that came to him was the after-image of the hawk. It worried him that he couldn't name it: he could so clearly picture its wings spread against the sky. He'd known the names of so many birds when he was eight. First prize in the Nature Test. But of course, this was a foreign bird. They couldn't fault him for failing to recognise a foreign bird, could they? The pain in his back was the worst. Slowly the idea came to him that the blond man might not have let him go, might have in fact followed him ever so quietly through the wood and bracken. This was not the way it should be. This wasn't right. He deserved more time. A beginning had been made back at the meeting place. With more time, he could make Feliks listen, make him understand. Feliks would forgive him, trust him, share confidences as they had in the past.

Am I dying? he wondered.

I don't know how to do this
, he thought worriedly, as the pinpoints of light faded,
I don't know what to do.