‘They followed me but I hid under a bridge.’ He sounds as if he is concealing something.
‘There’s blood under your nails,’ she says.
He lifts his hands and studies his fingers. The tips quiver in the muted light. ‘Unfortunately they doubled back.’
‘I think les poor cops bought it,’ Sola says to the dog, shaking her head.
‘What’s she doing here?’ David asks, tension overflowing into his voice.
‘Her name’s Sola. She’s the child from the park yesterday.’
‘I recognise her. Where did you find her?’
‘Outside her theatre.’
He huffs. ‘Is she really such a good idea?’
It isn’t his decision but rather than tell him that, Evie diplomatically replies, ‘It’s a long story. Believe me, it’s going to be easier to take her than to try not to.’
Sola shoves the dog onto the floor and crosses to Evie’s chair where she clambers onto her lap. Draping her arm tightly around Evie, Sola smirks back at David. ‘Je paid moi way.’
The three of them leave the room at dusk. They sneak through reception but move rapidly once on the street.
They only need to reach the train station, but Evie feels exposed. Anyone they pass could be after them and indeed they soon appear to have picked up not one but two tails. Both are bulky men in faded winter jackets. They could be innocuous but it feels wrong.
They round the next corner quickly and, from the safety of a doorway, watch the men pass.
Evie peers out. Nothing moves on the street. ‘They’ve gone,’ she says.
They emerge and, taking the next left turn and the next right, enter the parallel road.
Hearing distant footsteps, she glances around. The two men are in sight again, but together now, a hundred metres behind.
‘We need to get away from here,’ Evie says.
At the junction ahead, they see a third man, dressed as the others in the same drab hooded jacket. Again, it could be nothing or, as seems more likely, they are being boxed in.
‘What do we do?’ Sola asks, looking behind.
A woman in a sleek coat with a silver fur collar emerges from a doorway opposite and crosses the road towards them.
They watch her approach. What does she want? She is drawing attention to them.
The woman comes up alongside. ‘Yes, they after you very much,’ she says in a throaty voice. ‘Come with me now quickly, before they catch you.’
31
With no other choice, Evie, David and Sola follow the woman. She leads them a couple of metres to their right and then along a dark alley, the narrow entrance to which had been invisible in the gloom.
‘Who are you?’ Evie asks, as they emerge back into the light at the other end. She tries to make out the woman’s face behind the fur of her high collar.
The woman gives her a closed-lip smile. ‘I Yuliya.’ It isn’t much of an answer and Sola stares up at her suspiciously, clearly tempted to tell her as much.
‘Je thought we taking le train,’ Sola mutters. ‘Now we lost those men, we can still do eet.’
‘You lost them but they not lost you,’ Yuliya replies sharply, walking on briskly, obliging them to keep up. ‘They not give up just like that.’
Evie, tucking aside her own uncertainty, takes Sola’s hand tightly in hers, concerned the girl may decide her interests are best served at this point by deserting.
‘So, where are you taking us?’ David asks.
‘Somewhere safe,’ Yuliya says, glancing behind. ‘We not talk now or they hear. We be there very soon, then talk all we need. For now, no more chitter-chatter, all be quiet as mice.’
Yuliya leads them along at a rapid pace, managing to keep a half-pace ahead despite her boots’ slender metallic heels. Over their tap-tapping, Evie listens hard for pursuit.
The neighbourhood quickly improves, second-hand clothes stores making way for upmarket antique shops and hova showrooms, behind the high windows of which shiny vehicles dangle illuminated like Christmas baubles.
Reaching the river, the air thickens and the houses lining the distant bank merge into the charcoal smudge of the swollen water.
They cross a stone bridge onto an island. The winter tide has risen over the lip of the quays and laps the brickwork of the buildings.
Passing along a residential street, they enter under an arch into a courtyard. Reaching a door, Yuliya draws out a key and unlocks it. She steps through and holds it back. The hallway beyond is dark and wafts an odour of trapped decay. It is more like the gate to a prison.
They hesitate to enter but what options do they have?
Reluctantly they follow her through.
Once they are inside, Yuliya puts her head back out and glances both ways. She then closes the heavy door, shunting the stiff bolts home, dislodging a swirl of plaster from the high ceiling onto their hair.
Evie, David and Sola try to make out their surroundings from the single remaining bulb in an ornate chandelier.
‘This way,’ Yuliya says, steering them up a wide, dusty staircase.
Hearing feet outside, they come to a sudden stop, but whoever it is passes. ‘That them,’ Yuliya says. ‘You lucky, we make it just in time.’
They breathe in and continue up.
At the top of the stairs, Yuliya holds open one of a pair of tall doors.
The room beyond is opulent, like something out of a palace. Three of the walls are panelled with intricately gilded wood and hung with full length mirrors. Their images reflect back from the depths of the speckled glass, repeating and echoing, as if they are somewhere distant, small and lost. In the wrong place. The end wall is hung with a tapestry of men in robes sitting behind a table, the threads so bright the image bursts from the gloom.
‘What is it of ?’ Evie asks.
‘Old men eating,’ the woman replies, uninterested.
‘It ees “The Last Supper”,’ Sola says. ‘That eees sweet Jesus in le middle and le one that looks like Pompie ees Judas. Hees going to betray poor Jesus but he not know it yet.’
‘Where did you learn that from?’ David asks sceptically, as if she’s just made the story up.
She huffs. ‘Moi know stuff,’ crossing her arms and turning her shoulder away.
Along the centre of one long wall is a stone fireplace with a busy fire, although from it they can feel no heat and the air is as damp and chilly as it was on the street. The only furniture is a pair of deep-backed sofas positioned either side of a thick rug.
Three large circular windows provide a view of the city.
Yuliya strokes the top of Sola’s head but she squirms to the side, making a face like she’s been touched by a toad, and clambers up against the nearest window. Her feet sink through the surface of the sill as if it is carved from meringue.
Observing her immersed up to her ankles in the wood, David places his hand against the wall and the panel reforms around it. ‘I’ve seen this before,’ he says. ‘In Seoul. It’s a form of photon projection.’
‘You correct,’ Yuliya says. ‘It’s part of architect’s design. Very expensive and exclusive. Boris like everything of his that way.’ As she speaks, the walls are in the process of transforming: the tapestry fading, the fire fizzing out, and the cream and gold panels developing vertical bars of shadow. A blue evening light glimmers into being, delineating the trunks of trees, their dark branches appearing to reach several feet into the room.
Sola squeals and strides around the perimeter, finding the room’s vanished corners and running her fingers through the leaves and ferns which tremble to her touch. A night moth flutters up from under her feet and dizzily circles her head. Then a bat shoots the length of the ceiling. They all glance up, but it has passed in a flash, almost too quick to be seen.