‘Are you going to tell me?’ he said, staring down at her.
She wondered if he could tell what had happened just by looking at her, whether it was that obvious. She wiped her eyes and turned back to the hotel entrance.
‘I was attacked last night on my way back from the bar.’
Haltingly, she told him. Konstantin listened silently.
‘Just point him out to me,’ he said coldly when she had finished.
Guests started to appear, some checking out with suitcases, others with briefcases ready for their day’s meeting; a tourist studied his map for probably the hundredth time that morning, making an early start to the day’s exploration.
By eight forty-five she was starting to think they might have missed him. Maybe he had checked out the night before, slipped by, or exited by another door. Konstantin showed no sign of impatience; he was smoking a cigarette behind her, propped up against the church wall. A halo of white cigarette smoke drifted by her and dissolved in the frozen air. She smiled for the first time since the previous night, turned and caught him studying her. In an hour they had hardly exchanged a word.
Five minutes later a taxi pulled up outside the hotel entrance. A man emerged from reception carrying an official-looking attaché case and climbed in.
‘That’s him,’ she whispered.
Konstantin wrote down the cab telephone number displayed under the taxi sign.
‘I need you to make a couple of calls. Then you can go home.’
‘I’m not going home.’
He started to object and stopped. His mouth opened and closed without saying a word.
From his pocket Konstantin extracted a few kopeks and pointed at the payphone across the street.
‘This is Inga from the taxi company. One of our drivers just collected someone from your hotel, a…’ Viktoriya hesitated, ‘I can’t read his name. He left his briefcase on the back seat and he is no longer where we dropped him off. Is your guest returning to the hotel?’
‘I will check. Yes, that will be Pavel Antyuhin. He is here for a couple more nights. You can leave it here. I’ll be in all day.’
She replaced the receiver and called the taxi company.
‘Hello, I’m calling from the Baltic Hotel. You just collected one of our guests, a Pavel Antyuhin. He has left some papers in reception. Can you tell me where you dropped him?’
There was a muffled conversation as the taxi booker covered the receiver.
‘Yes, I have it here – 36 Italyanskaya.’
Chapter 3
Number thirty-six was a retail store reserved for party members selling household goods. It looked empty. The window sported a dusty white vacuum cleaner, a lamp with no shade and a random stack of pots and pans that leaned precariously towards the glass.
‘We’ll wait here,’ Konstantin said, lighting up another cigarette.
Parking themselves opposite, hoods and scarves covering their faces, they had only a few minutes to wait before she caught a glimpse of their quarry. He had stepped forward from the rear of the store, a list of some sort in his hand, and was standing looking out onto the street. For one moment he seemed to look directly at her, but a second later he turned and walked back inside the store. He was broader than she had remembered him. His lank hair was swept back from his forehead, away from those thick dark eyebrows.
‘Are you okay?’ Konstantin asked.
She nodded, unsure about how she truly felt. Looking up at Konstantin now, she knew she had made the right decision calling him. He made her feel safe. The anxiety she had experienced earlier had been replaced by something else, a toxic mix of loathing, hatred and anger.
The sound of the door opening across the street made her start. Antyuhin had paused in its frame, making final adjustments to his coat and scarf. The store manager lingered awkwardly behind, no doubt anxious for his visitor to be gone.
‘What now?’ she asked.
‘We follow him.’
They set off at a safe distance behind him, occasionally taking opposite sides of the street, arm in arm, a couple about their business. Antyuhin made two more calls before stopping on Kazanskaya for lunch, at a dismal-looking eating house with plastic-topped tables, a food counter displaying savoury pasties and a large soup tureen. They watched as he took his seat by the window with a steaming bowl and a large slice of dark rye bread.
‘We haven’t got long,’ said Konstantin, his back to the window. They had moved to a café across the street where they could observe the eatery’s exit. ‘I’m going to make a call.’
With one eye on Antyuhin, Viktoriya watched Konstantin exit onto the street and stride up to a payphone not ten metres away. An old lady was speaking animatedly into its mouthpiece. Konstantin reached in and depressed the disconnect bar. She looked up, startled. Viktoriya couldn’t see Konstantin’s face, but whatever his expression the old lady thought better than to remonstrate. She picked up her bags and with an exaggerated shrug squeezed past him.
Konstantin fed the meter, dialled, looked over at her and winked, before whoever he was calling answered the phone. Stern-faced, occasionally shaking his head with what she presumed was frustration, the conversation lasted not much more than a minute.
Antyuhin was still seated when Konstantin returned to their vantage point across the street. He looked at his watch. She wondered how much longer he would remain there, when he suddenly stood up and started to put away the papers he had earlier taken from his briefcase.
They both got up.
‘You wait here by the payphone.’
He pulled a notepad out of his pocket, tore off a sheet, and scribbled OUT OF ORDER and handed it to her.
‘You know Lev and Ilia?’
She nodded.
‘They won’t be long. I’ll call you the moment Comrade Antyuhin stops.’
Konstantin bent forward and rather unexpectedly kissed her on both cheeks.
‘Mr Khozraschet is not going to get away. You have my word on that.’
‘He’s leaving,’ she told him, squeezing his arm. Antyuhin had stepped onto the prospect. ‘No… don’t turn round yet… Okay, now. He’s headed east.’
Konstantin set off after him on the opposite side of the street, before turning back to look at her and mimic a phone with a hand held to his ear.
She took a last bite of the stuffed cabbage roll and then followed Konstantin out onto the street and fastened the OUT OF ORDER sign to the phone box with some gum.
The winter sun still on its northward journey had begun to dip. Shading her eyes, Viktoriya looked both ways down the prospect for Konstantin’s two comrades. She vaguely remembered meeting them at a student party Konstantin had thrown at his share a year back. They were not so much his friends as gofers, collecting, by nefarious means, unpaid debts that Konstantin had purchased for next to nothing from unsatisfied creditors.
A tap on her shoulder made her spin round. For one second she thought it might be Antyuhin and that he had managed somehow to escape Konstantin and beat his way back to her. Lev and Ilia stood there, stupid grins on their faces.
‘Kostya said to meet him here… didn’t say anything else,’ said Lev. Lev was well built with small deep-set grey eyes, his friend slightly taller, round-faced with thick lips, and the smell of alcohol and fish on his breath. Ilia was doing his best to hold a sausage roll away from his body as relish dripped down his wrist inside his parka jacket.
‘We just wait for his call,’ she said, indicating the public payphone.
Nearby, a gang of municipal workers scraped new snow off the pavement, piling it up in small mountains by the kerb. The temperature had dropped a good five degrees in the last hour. It was all they could do to keep their circulation going by clapping their hands and stamping their feet. Viktoriya bought sweet teas from a street vendor and made it abundantly clear she was listening for the phone and not to Ilia when he attempted to start up a conversation.