Box 21 (11 page)

 

Lydia had stood up to Dimitri, straight-backed in front of him and said that from now on she intended to hold on to the money, it was her they screwed and she deserved to keep what they paid. He’d struck her in the face at first, it was his usual reaction and Lydia must have expected it. She hadn’t backed off, just told him that she didn’t want any customers for a bit, no one lying on top of her, she was too tired and didn’t want to do it any more.

 

Lydia had never protested before. Not aloud to Dimitri, that is. She had dreaded the blows, the pain and the gun he sometimes pointed at their heads. Alena sat down on the edge of the quay with her legs dangling. Three years. She
missed Janoz so much it tore at her. Why had she gone away, why hadn’t she told him that she was going?

 

She had been a child.

 

Now she had grown into someone different.

 

It had happened suddenly, in that ship’s cabin. The Swedish man had held her down and spat in her face, twice, while he forced himself into her. The change had continued afterwards, a little more for every time someone stole from inside her.

 

She had stood in the doorway of her room, watching. When he got the whip out and held it in front of Lydia’s face, she had rushed in and jumped on him. Dimitri had never beaten them with the whip, only threatened to. When she tried to grab it, he kicked her in the stomach, shoved her into her room and locked the door, shouting that she’d get hers later.

 

She stared down into the water, waiting. She should go back. Home to Klaipeda. Home to Janoz, if he was still there. But not yet. Not until Lydia had been in touch.

 

She had counted the sounds, every lash, one by one. The police had arrived at stroke thirty-six. She had heard every single impact through the shut door, heard Dimitri lifting the whip to strike Lydia’s bare skin once more.

 

Her feet. If she stretched her legs, they would touch the water. She could jump in. Or she could get up and board the ship. Go home.

 

But not yet.

 

They had seen each other being raped. She had to wait.

 

They had searched the flat and someone had unlocked her door. Dimitri had been lying on the floor, clutching his stomach. She had been alone for a few seconds, minutes maybe, then suddenly she saw the policeman they knew, and panicked, ran the few steps to the front door, which had a big hole in it, but turned back to kick the knocked-down Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp hard in the balls with the pointed tip of her shoe. Then she had carried on running,
out on to the landing, down the empty stone stairs, all five floors.

 

She reacted to the ring tone at once. She knew who it was.

 

‘Yes?’

 

‘Alena? It’s me.’

 

Hearing Lydia’s voice made her feel good. She was in pain, Alena could hear that. It was difficult for her to speak, but her voice, it was so good to hear her voice again.

 

‘Where are you?’

 

‘At the harbour.’

 

‘You’re going home.’

 

‘I was waiting for you to phone. I knew you would. Then . . .Then I could go home.’

 

The mobile phone had been a present from one of the faces she couldn’t remember. Alena had wanted gifts from customers who asked for extras, Lydia had preferred money. The things she got might be clothes, a couple of necklaces and sometimes a pair of earrings. Dimitri didn’t have a clue and didn’t know about the mobile phone either, of course. It was quite new; in return the forgotten face had been allowed to do extras with both of them together. Lydia had wanted the mobile; she thought it would be good to have at least one between them, just in case.

 

‘What are you going to do?’

 

‘When?’

 

‘When you get back home.’

 

‘I don’t know.’

 

‘Do you miss it a lot?’

 

Alena caught her breath. She had a vision of what it had been like, kind of grim and messy. Klaipeda hadn’t been very nice.

 

‘Yes, I do. I want to see them all again. See what they look like. Maybe to find out what we would’ve looked like.’

 

She told Lydia about her escape, how she had fled down into Völund Street without turning back to look, not once,
just running from the place she hated. Now, after twenty-four endless hours of wandering around in the city, she wanted to sleep, simply sleep for a while. Lydia didn’t say much. A bit about the hospital where they had been taken a couple of times, a bit about the bed, the food, the nurse from Poland who spoke Russian.

 

Not a word about the gashes on her back.

 

‘Alena?’

 

‘Yes, what?’

 

‘I need you to help me.’

 

Alena looked down again. For the moment the water was calm and she could see a blurred image of herself, the dangling legs and the arm and the hand holding the phone to her ear.

 

‘I’ll help you. Ask anything.’

 

Lydia’s breathing came slowly. She seemed to be searching for words.

 

‘Do you remember the cellar with the storerooms?’

 

Alena remembered well: the hard floor, the impenetrable dark at night, the damp air. Once, when Dimitri had some visitors to stay, he locked Alena and Lydia up in the cellar for two days. He needed their beds, he said, but never told them anything about the guests.

 

‘Yes, I do.’

 

‘I want you to go there.’

 

The calm surface rippled in the wake of a passing motor-boat, the wavelets dispersing her image.

 

‘But they’re after me; I might be on the wanted list. I’ve got to be careful.’

 

‘I want you to go back.’

 

‘Why?’

 

Silence. Lydia didn’t reply.

 

‘Lydia, tell me. Why?’

 

‘Why? Because it’s not going to happen again. What happened to me will never happen again. That’s why.’

 

Alena got up. She paced up and down along the quayside,
between the iron posts, which were taller than a man.

 

‘What do you want me to do there?’

 

‘There’s a bucket with a towel in it. In the storeroom. Underneath the towel you’ll find a gun. And Semtex.’

 

‘Semtex?’

 

‘Plastic explosive. And a detonator. In plastic carrier bags.’

 

‘How do you know?’

 

‘I saw it there.’

 

‘How do you know it’s Semtex?’

 

‘I just know.’

 

Alena Sljusareva had been trying to take all this in, listening but not quite hearing what Lydia said. She said shush into the phone. Lydia kept talking, so Alena shushed her again, more loudly, hissing until the line was her own.

 

‘Lydia, I’m going to hang up now. Phone me back in two minutes. Two minutes, that’s enough.’

 

There was an afternoon sailing in a few hours. She could take it. She had the money. She had everything she needed in her shoulder bag. She wanted to go home, to see the place she called home; she wanted to close her eyes, forget about the last three years, be seventeen again and happy and lovely, be someone who had never left Klaipeda, not even to see Vilnius.

 

None of it was true or ever would be. That was then. Now she was someone different.

 

The phone rang.

 

‘I’ll help you.’

 

‘Thank you, Alena. I love you.’

 

Alena felt nervous, carried on marching between the iron posts, up and down with the phone pressed to her ear.

 

‘Number forty-six, you’ll see the figures quite high up the door. There is a small padlock, nothing special. The bucket is just inside the door, to the right when you go in. The gun and some ammunition is in one of the bags, the Semtex is next to it. Take the lot and then go to the Central Station, to our box.’

 

‘I was there yesterday.’

 

‘Was everything all right?’

 

Alena took her time.

 

Their box was a small, square metal lock-up, set into the stone of a waiting-room wall. Their lives were stored in box 21.

 

‘Everything was fine.’

 

‘Get the video.’

 

That video. Alena had almost forgotten about it and the faceless man who liked being filmed. Once, he had asked her to make love with Lydia. Alena had refused, but Lydia had caressed her cheek when he was watching and said they could touch each other, that he could film them, if they could make their own film afterwards.

 

‘Now?’

 

‘Yes, it’s the right time. We’ll use it.’

 

‘Are you sure?’

 

‘Dead certain.’

 

Lydia cleared her throat before starting to explain.

 

‘I’ve been lying here just thinking about everything. My arm hurts and my back feels like it’s on fire. It’s hard to sleep. I’ve written down my thoughts. Worked it all out, read it, scribbled bits out and rewritten. Alena, I am absolutely sure. Someone has to know. This must never happen again.’

 

Alena looked at the large blue ferry waiting a few hundred metres away. She wouldn’t get back to the harbour in time. Not today. But tomorrow was another day and the departure time was the same. All she had to do was vanish for one more night. It could be done.

 

‘Then what?’

 

‘Then come here, to Söder Hospital. There’s a guard keeping an eye on me, so we can’t talk. I’ll be sitting in the patients’ dayroom and watching TV. There are other patients around most of the time, people I don’t know, so I won’t be alone. There’s a toilet next to the dayroom. If I sit on
the sofa, I’ll see you when you go past. Go into the toilet and put everything you’ve brought into the bin, then stick some used paper towels on top. Keep everything, the gun and the ammo and the explosive and the video, in a plastic bag; the stuff in the bin might be wet. Oh, and some string. I need string too. Can you get hold of some?’

 

‘So I’m to walk past you and pretend you aren’t there?’

 

‘Yes.’

 

Alena Sljusareva turned her back on the water and walked away. When she reached the road the wind had picked up. It was a wide road that cut through the harbour area, passing the warehouses on its way up towards Gärdet.

 

The city centre was full of people, tourists desperately shopping while the rain fell. Alena was grateful for the crowds. The more people there were in the streets, the easier it was for her to hide.

 

She took the metro to the Central Station, went to find box 21, opened it and put the video in her bag. Then she stood for a while in front of the open locker, staring into the dark interior where their belongings were stacked on two shelves. Their lives. At least, the only parts they accepted. All that mattered after three years.

 

She had only been there twice before, on the day they acquired it, and then yesterday.

 

Almost two years ago, Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp had taken them to the Central Station. He had told them that they were to leave the Stockholm flat for a few weeks and work in Copenhagen instead. The flat there had turned out to be in a building just off the Strřget shopping area and close to the harbour. The customers were mostly drunk Swedes fresh off the Malmö ferry, smelling of lager and duty-free chocolate bars. They often paid for two goes, went off after the first time to drink through the night and returned to slap the girls about or wank in front of them or ride them once more before going back home.

 

While they had waited for the train to Copenhagen, Alena had said she needed to go to the toilet, simply had to go. Dimitri had been alone with them and warned her not to even think of giving him the slip. If she didn’t get back in good time for the train he would kill Lydia. She believed him. She never had the slightest intention of leaving her friend alone with him anyway. Nothing could have made her.

 

All she wanted was a locker of her own, a kind of home.

 

One of her regulars was a man with a plumbing business in Strängnäs, who every week would spend hours on the road to come and see her. He had told her about the safe boxes you could hire for two weeks at a time. They were meant as a convenience for visitors to the city, but were mostly used by the homeless.

 

Instead of going to the toilet, Alena had used her fifteen minutes away from Dimitri to get one of these lockers. It had been frantic, but she had made it and returned happily with a key hidden in each shoe.

 

Her helpful regular had cut a copy of the key and agreed to take things to the locker and to keep renewing the agreement before it ran out, his part of the bargain if she allowed him to do extras. She always bled a lot afterwards, but it had been worth it.

 

Standing in front of the open locker, she knew how true that was.

 

Having a place that was their own, where Dimitri-Bastard-Pimp couldn’t get his fingers on their things, no matter how much he threatened, that had been worth every blow.

 

Alena knew she would never come back and she took all that was hers, the necklaces, earrings, dresses. They each had their own key. She left Lydia’s things and her money; when she got out of hospital she would find what was hers waiting for her.

 

She locked the door and walked away.

 

The metro again, the green line this time. The train was packed. She got off at St Erik’s Square, climbed the stairs
to the wet tarmac outside and started walking, keeping a lookout for that Vietnamese restaurant, one of her route markers. After the restaurant it wasn’t far to another flight of stairs, though this one was beautiful, with great big angels to anchor the handrails. She followed the steps down to Völund Street.

 

Alena had reached the last of the steps when she saw the police car with two uniformed cops inside. She bent down, pretending to shake a stone out of a shoe, taking her time and trying to think fast.

 

She couldn’t think.

 

Her eyes followed two children leading their bicycles. They passed the police car without anyone taking much notice.

 

Still no thoughts; she seemed unable to think.

 

This was here and now. It always was here and now.

 

She put her shoe on, straightened up and walked calmly towards the front door of the building, staring straight ahead, as if untouched by the rain that fell all around her, thinking about what she didn’t remember, the men with forgotten faces who came to lie down on top of her.