The room beyond had scarlet floorboards; they glistened as if freshly painted. And now the decorator appeared in person. His torso had been ripped open from neck to navel. He pressed his hands to the breached dam, but they were useless to stem the flood; his blood came in spurts, and with it, his innards. He met Ballard's gaze, his eyes full to overflowing with death, but his body had not yet received the instruction to lie down and die; it juddered on in a pitiful attempt to escape the scene of execution behind him.
The spectacle had brought Ballard to a halt, and the Russian from the door now took hold of him, and pulled him back into the hallway, shouting into his face. The outburst, in panicked Russian, was beyond Ballard, but he needed no translation of the hands that encircled his throat. The Russian was half his weight again, and had the grip of an expert strangler, but Ballard felt effortlessly the man's superior. He wrenched the attacker's hands from his neck, and struck him across the face. It was a fortuitous blow. The Russian fell back against the staircase, his shouts silenced.
Ballard looked back towards the scarlet room. The dead man had gone, though scraps of flesh had been left on the threshold.
From within, laughter.
Ballard turned to the Russian.
'What in God's name's going on?' he demanded, but the other man simply stared through the open door.
Even as he spoke, the laughter stopped. A shadow moved across the blood-splattered wall of the interior, and a voice said:
'Ballard?'
There was a roughness there, as if the speaker had been shouting all day and night, but it was the voice of Mironenko.
'Don't stand out in the cold,' he said, 'come on in. And bring Solomonov.'
The other man made a bid for the front door, but Ballard had hold of him before he could take two steps.
'There's nothing to be afraid of, Comrade,' said Mironenko. 'The dog's gone.' Despite the reassurance, Solomonov began to sob as Ballard pressed him towards the open door.
Mironenko was right; it was warmer inside. And there no sign of a dog. There was blood in abundance, however. The man Ballard had last seen teetering in the doorway had been dragged back into this abattoir while he and Solomonov had struggled. The body had been treated with astonishing barbarity. The head had been smashed open; the innards were a grim litter underfoot.
Squatting in the shadowy corner of this terrible room, Mironenko. He had been mercilessly beaten to judge by the swelling about his head and upper torso, but his unshaven face bore a smile for his saviour.
'I knew you'd come,' he said. His gaze fell upon Solomonov. They followed me,' he said. 'They meant to kill me, I suppose. Is that what you intended, Comrade?'
Solomonov shook with fear - his eyes flitting from the bruised moon of Mironenko's face to the pieces of gut that lay everywhere about - finding nowhere a place of refuge.
'What stopped them?' Ballard asked.
Mironenko stood up. Even this slow movement caused Solomonov to flinch.
'Tell Mr Ballard,' Mironenko prompted. 'Tell him what happened.' Solomonov was too terrified to speak. 'He's KGB, of course,' Mironenko explained. 'Both trusted men. But not trusted enough to be warned, poor idiots. So they were sent to murder me with just a gun and a prayer.' He laughed at the thought. 'Neither of which were much use in the circumstances.'
'I beg you ...' Solomonov murmured, '... let me go. I'll say nothing.'
'You'll say what they want you to say, Comrade, the way we all must,' Mironenko replied. 'Isn't that right, Ballard? All slaves of our faith?'
Ballard watched Mironenko's face closely; there was a fullness there that could not be entirely explained by the bruising. The skin almost seemed to crawl.
'They have made us forgetful,' Mironenko said.
'Of what?' Ballard enquired.
'Of ourselves,' came the reply, and with it Mironenko moved from his murky corner and into the light.
What had Solomonov and his dead companion done to him? His flesh was a mass of tiny contusions, and there were bloodied lumps at his neck and temples which Ballard might have taken for bruises but that they palpitated, as if something nested beneath the skin. Mironenko made no sign of discomfort however, as he reached out to Solomonov. At his touch the failed assassin lost control of his bladder, but Mironenko's intentions were not murderous. With eerie tenderness he stroked a tear from Solomonov's cheek. 'Go back to them,' he advised the trembling man. 'Tell them what you've seen.'
Solomonov seemed scarcely to believe his ears, or else suspected - as did Ballard - that this forgiveness was a sham, and that any attempt to leave would invite fatal consequences.
But Mironenko pressed his point. 'Go on,' he said. 'Leave us please. Or would you prefer to stay and eat?'
Solomonov took a single, faltering step towards the door. When no blow came he took a second step, and a third, and now he was out of the door and away.
Tell them!' Mironenko shouted after him. The front door slammed.
'Tell them what?' said Ballard.
'That I've remembered,' Mironenko said. 'That I've found the skin they stole from me.'
For the first time since entering this house, Ballard began to feel queasy. It was not the blood nor the bones underfoot, but a look in Mironenko's eyes. He'd seen eyes as bright once before. But where?
'You -' he said quietly, 'you did this.'
'Certainly,' Mironenko replied.
'How?' Ballard said. There was a familiar thunder climbing from the back of his head. He tried to ignore it, and press some explanation from the Russian. 'How, damn you?'
'We are the same,' Mironenko replied. 'I smell it in you.'
'No,' said Ballard. The clamour was rising.
The doctrines are just words. It's not what we're taught but what we know that matters. In our marrow; in our souls.'
He had talked of souls once before; of places his masters had built in which a man could be broken apart. At the time Ballard had thought such talk mere extravagance; now he wasn't so sure. What was the burial party all about, if not the subjugation of some secret part of him? The marrow-part; the soul-part.
Before Ballard could find the words to express himself, Mironenko froze, his eyes gleaming more brightly than ever.
'They're outside,' he said.
'Who are?'
The Russian shrugged. 'Does it matter?' he said. 'Your side or mine. Either one will silence us if they can.'
That much was true.
'We must be quick,' he said, and headed for the hallway. The front door stood ajar. Mironenko was there in moments. Ballard followed. Together they slipped out on to the street.
The fog had thickened. It idled around the street- lamps, muddying their light, making every doorway a hiding place. Ballard didn't wait to tempt the pursuers out into the open, but followed Mironenko, who was already well ahead, swift despite his bulk. Ballard had to pick up his pace to keep the man in sight. One moment he was visible, the next the fog closed around him.
The residential property they moved through now gave way to more anonymous buildings, warehouses perhaps, whose walls stretched up into the murky darkness unbroken by windows. Ballard called after him to slow his crippling pace. The Russian halted and turned back to Ballard, his outline wavering in the besieged light. Was it a trick of the fog, or had Mironenko's condition deteriorated in the minutes since they'd left the house? His face seemed to be seeping; the lumps on his neck had swelled further.