Cover Him with Darkness (15 page)

I stared at the dog, feeling sick. Could it tell what I'd done?

Egan wasn't looking, luckily.

It was a big store, and it did have an automated photo booth at the back. I took two sets of passport snaps, just to be sure, and then wandered up and down the aisles, filling a basket with deodorant and moisturizer and all the useful things I didn't have anymore.

When I looked up from a packet of dental floss, there were three men watching me from the top end of the aisle. They were informally dressed, fairly rough looking, and they weren't carrying baskets.

I dropped the floss into my stash and walked casually in the other direction, toward the back of the store. Rounding the end of the aisle, I spotted Egan in the parallel row staring at the shelves with the pained frown of someone trying to work out which product was what purely from the packaging pictures.

“I think we might have to go,” I told him as I hurried up.

“What's wrong?”

He followed the line of my gaze back down the aisle, just as three men rounded the corner. Two were a couple of those nondescript guys I'd already spotted. The third, leading them, was my Uncle Josif.

“That's her,” said he, pointing.

chapter seven

CONFESSION

O
h crap,” I said, backing off.

“Okay…” muttered Egan, and as he started to retreat after me I turned tail, dropping my basket as I scurried up the aisle.

That was the moment that the missing third stranger stepped out at the top end, cutting off our exit route to the tills and the door.

“Milja!” said Josif loudly behind me. “Come here!”

No way was I obeying, but I didn't see a way out. I looked wildly up and down the lane as the men started to close from either end. The lone man was nearly on top of us.

Then Egan stepped in front of me, brandishing a mop from a display stand of Wonder Cleaning Products, and he swung it and smashed it with all his strength across the side of the man's knee. The guy folded with a hoarse scream. Egan reached out, grabbed me and practically threw me up the aisle in front of him; I only kept my feet by running. I piled through the queue at the till, shoving people left and right. A glance behind told me Egan was on my heels, still brandishing the mop and taking rearguard action, so I belted across the parking lot in the direction of our rental car.

There was an odd cracking noise.

“Run!” Egan roared, appearing to my right and pointing the remote
key. The car sidelights flashed twice. I could hear Uncle Josif shouting too, though I couldn't take in the words. I bundled into the passenger side and Egan gunned the engine before I even pulled the door shut, and we lurched forward. I thought we were going to hit a post for one heart-stopping moment, but he wrenched the wheel right and we spun away, scraping against some innocent's rear spoiler.

“Ah!” I howled, trying to hold myself down on my seat as we hurtled out into the traffic lane. The Orthodox prayer for beginning a journey leaped into my mouth; “Oh Savior who hast journeyed with Luke and Cleopas to Emmaus, journey with thy servants as they now set out upon their way, and defend them from all evil!”

“Amen,” Egan growled, spinning us abruptly through ninety degrees and down a side street that was far too narrow for the speed he was accelerating to. A child on a bicycle barely made it out of our way.

“What're you doing, you lunatic!”

“They're following us.”

I looked over my shoulder and saw the silver SUV through the rear window—but I only got a glimpse because Egan grabbed my head and shoved it down into his lap. “Head down!”

“What!” I wailed, my face bouncing off his hard thigh and then the steering wheel.

“Get down in the seat well!”

I shoved myself back onto my own side and crouched in front of my seat, knees jammed against the dash. We were going down a long straight slope; I could see a lot of sky and the tops of buildings and a distant set of traffic lights over the middle of a big junction. They were lit red.

“Ah, shite,” said Egan grimly.

Go green, go green
, I thought.
Let us through!

They went green. Egan jerked the car over a lane and we shot past a queue of traffic, underneath the lights and back into lane. I shut my eyes and tried not to get impaled on the gearshift.

Three minutes and several switchback junctions later, Egan slowed the car. “We've lost them.”

“What, what, what,” I mumbled stupidly. “What the hell? You could have killed us both!”

“Who were those men?” he countered.

“I don't know! I mean…one was my Uncle Josif. I've never seen the others before.”

“They shot at you.” Egan's eyes were still alternating between the road and the rearview mirrors: for once there was no gentleness in his face. “Didn't you hear it?”

“
What?
”

“Your man who recognized you—he called them off, I think. But there were at least two shots. So yeah—what the hell? Good question, Milja. They wanted you bad.”

I crawled back onto my seat and stared around us, but the roads looked peaceful and nonthreatening. I didn't know what to think. “Where are we headed?”

“Back to the house.”

“No!” I grabbed his arm. “They followed us from there—they know where we're staying—God knows how—the taxi driver I suppose—” Words tumbled out as the thoughts spilled through my mind. “We can't go back there: they'll be waiting for us!”

He flicked a look at me sideways. “That's grand,” he said, turning into the lane for the city center.

“What? What's happening?”

“If they're waiting at the house, we'll head for the Hotel Mimosa. This is our best chance to get your passport when there's no one around. Do you remember the combination to the safe lock?”

“Uh. Yes. If she hasn't changed it.”

“You're such a pessimist, Milja.”

He was the second man to accuse me of that today. I opened my mouth, shut it again and went quiet. The city scenery hummed and beeped and growled past us. I sat watching, but my mind wasn't on what was in front of my eyes. In my head I replayed the events in the drugstore, trying to make sense of the chaos.

I hadn't seen much. It all seemed unreal, except for the feeling of panic and nausea. Nothing much was clear—except the absolute lack of hesitation with which Egan had smashed that man's knee. I saw that over and over again.

“What the hell was that with the mop?” I said as we turned in front of the hospital and pulled up in front of the hotel.

“Pardon?”

“You broke his leg. I saw. You broke it. Just like that!”

Egan pulled a face. “Ah, well…you see, I grew up playing hurling.”

“What's hurling?”

“It's a game for men with iron balls and no teeth,” he muttered, squinting up at the hotel's multistory facade. “Come on.”

We walked round to the back and then into the hotel via the service parking lot and the swimming pool area. No one stopped us; no one so much as glanced at us. As we crossed the lobby I tried to see if Vera's key was hanging on the board behind the desk, but I couldn't be sure.

“They might have checked out,” I warned Egan as we climbed the stairs to the third floor. He'd refused to take the elevator.

“Well they certainly haven't left the city yet.”

He insisted on taking the lead as we emerged into the corridor, but there was no one in sight. We padded down the carpeted hall to room 312.

“What's Montenegrin for
room service
?” he whispered.

I told him, and he knocked and made a reasonable go of reproducing the syllables. But there was no answer. He tried again, and pushed the handle, in vain.

My shoulders drooped a little. My next plan was to go back down to the check-in desk, ask for the key and hope that the receptionist remembered me accompanying Vera.

I didn't get the chance, as it turned out. Egan stepped back and looked the door up and down. It wasn't an upscale hotel, and the doors on this floor were faced in cheap veneer and carried an old-fashioned lock. Without warning, he slammed his boot sole hard into the wood. The noise made me cringe. He had a kick like a mule: on the second blow the jamb splintered and the door flew inward.

That was the moment I really stopped pigeonholing him as a “nice I.T. guy.”

And when he stalked into the room I followed, praying that we had the right occupants and that nobody else had heard.

We got half of what I asked for, anyway.

Inside, the hotel room stank of incense and hot wax. The curtains were
drawn tight, so that it took us a while for our eyes to adjust, because apart from the open door the only illumination came from ranks of candles weeping wax all over a dressing table loaded with icons. My cousin Vera knelt at the foot of the bed, her face buried in the quilt cover, her shoulders shaking.

My feet felt like they were made of lead.

Egan scanned the visible area, went to check that the en-suite bathroom was empty and then said to me, very softly, “The safe?”

Wide-eyed, I jerked my head to indicate the built-in wardrobe. He pointed a finger at me, and then at Vera, his expression grave. As he went for the cupboard, I took a deep breath and closed on her hunched form.

“
Nana
? Are you all right?”

I'm not sure what I expected her response to be. To ignore me, probably, or perhaps to fly at my face in fury. She didn't do either. She lifted her head from the bed, and I glimpsed the big dark stain she'd left on the duvet. Then she turned her face toward me and I saw where it had come from; there were encrustations all over her lips and lower jaw that looked black in this dim light but that I knew, with a sickening lurch, should be red.

Her eyes were sticky and swollen half-shut.

“Oh my God, Vera, what did they do to you?” I gasped.

“She did it to herself,” said the man behind me in the doorway. Silhouetted against the lit corridor, he was nothing but a bulky shadow. “She took a knife to her tongue in horror and repentance at the things she had to confess to us. Such foul secrets and such black sins. A burden unbearable.”

I stared as he closed the room door behind him and came forward into the circle of candlelight. It was the big priest with the gray-and-black striped beard, the one I'd seen with Father Velimir, and I could only think
Don't look at Egan, Milja, don't give him away
.

Hidden behind the open wardrobe door, in the half dark, Egan was momentarily unnoticed as the newcomer entered the room. The priest's attention was all on me, hunkered down over my shaking cousin.

“Now we have you, witch,” he said lifting his hands.

Egan stepped out—and the cupboard door creaked. The priest moved faster than I'd have expected, turning to the new threat—and then he took a step back, face slack with fear.

“Is that
him?
” he asked, starting to cross himself. “Jesus Christ have—”

Egan took that advantage. He kicked the priest in the gut, grabbed his beard as he folded, and punched him in the side of the head. The big man went down like a stone, without another word but nearly taking Egan with him.

What the—?
I thought.

“Get the light!” my companion hissed.

I scrambled for the switch by the bed. The electric light dispelled some of the claustrophobic ecclesiastical atmosphere, though it didn't make the scene any less crazy. I stared as Egan used a dressing-gown belt to tie the priest's hands behind his back.

“Don't just stand there!” he told me. “The safe's locked—get it open.”

I had to climb over the bed to reach the wardrobe without trampling people. But once I was there I hesitated, unable not to look at the priest laid out alongside the bed.

“He's fine,” said Egan, checking the pulse at his throat to demonstrate. “Hurry up, Milja.”

I took his word for it. What else could I do? Vera made a horrible moaning noise as she watched us, and I wanted to echo the sentiment. I felt sick with confusion and horror. The four-digit code I punched in on the safe keys winked redly at me from the interior of the wardrobe, like the eyes of a devil.

The safe did not unlock.

I tried again. I tried a different combination of the numbers, in case I'd misremembered. It made no difference. I turned to Egan, standing astride the unconscious priest, and shook my head.

He went over to Vera and knelt down to face her. Just for a second I felt a scream of protest rise in my throat—but it was the normal, familiar Egan who looked her in the eye. His expression was mild and when he spoke his voice was soft and sympathetic.

“We need Milja's passport. Where is it?”

Vera shot me a venomous look and a red trickle ran from the corner of her mouth. She shook her head.