There was no electricity, either, but as night fell they lit candles. Belov chatted easily, although his real talent lay in persuading her to talk without her realising that she'd been persuaded. All that she really learned about him was that yes, he was a psychiatrist — 'one of the dissertation writers', as he referred to himself — and that his wife had died after an illness about five years before. Through all of this there was a shadow falling across the conversation, and it was a while before Alina could bring herself to give it a name.
But it had to be faced, and so she finally said, "How long can I stay here?"
It seemed that Belov had only been waiting for her to ask. "What you're really asking, is whether you'll have to go back."
"Will I?"
"In theory, yes." But there was a faint glimmer in his eyes, like those of a favourite uncle hiding something unexpected behind his back. "I may be able to arrange something. It's mostly a matter of timing… but I'll do what I can. Please don't get your hopes up."
There was a long pause.
And then Alina said, "Who was the child?"
But now it was Belov's turn to say nothing.
Some time later, she lay in her bed without sleeping. She was wondering if it was true, if he could somehow arrange her release; doctors had ordered her internment, so surely it was possible for another doctor to end it. But did Belov have the power? Borrowing her for dissertation research was one thing — she was sure now that this was the reason behind her removal from the hospital — but a release seemed, frankly, unlikely.
She'd seen no trace of anyone else in the village, and no sign of anyone along the afternoon's walk. There were no locks on the farmhouse doors. Perhaps, when she'd grown stronger, she could slip away into the night and keep on walking… after all, what was the worst that could possibly happen to her? The answer to that was, nothing that hadn't happened already. If they caught her, they caught her. And if they shot her instead — well, perhaps that wouldn't be quite so bad. With this thought in her mind and the sound of Belov's restless pacing on the boards up above, she finally drifted away.
When she awoke late in the morning, Belov wasn't there.
She checked his room, but his bed was cold. His small suitcase had been packed, and looked as if it was ready to go. She went straight back downstairs, got her own clothes together, and made a bundle with some of the provisions. Then she let herself out of the farmhouse, and started to walk.
There was nothing to indicate that he was anywhere in the village, and she didn't want to waste time on being any more thorough than this. She struck out across-country, heading away from the marshes and the distant water with its old-time tales of death.
At any moment he expected to hear his voice behind her, calling her back. If it came, she wouldn't respond. There was a woodland of spruce and pine ahead, where the ground began to climb toward a low, sinuous ridge that was the only feature on this otherwise flat horizon; it rose like a shadow from the plain, dense with trees but delicately etched around the edges.
It took her an hour to reach it, and a patrol was waiting.
There were three of them. With the binoculars that they carried, they must have been able to see her from the moment that she set out. Two of them stood with their rifles levelled at her and the third raised his palm and made a short, brusque, fly swatting kind of gesture. Not a word was spoken, but the meaning was clear; go back, or else.
The 'or else' was a possibility that she'd already considered and decided to embrace, if it came.
But she turned around, and began the long, slow walk back to the village.
There was a red car waiting outside the farmhouse when she reached it; the car's wheels had cut deep tracks through the long grass, tracks that were only just beginning to fade as the plains wind breathed across them. Belov was loading up, getting ready to leave, and he seemed to be in a hurry. He showed no surprise at her obviously unsuccessful attempt to run, nor did he even comment on it.
Instead, he said, "In the car, quickly. We have to go back to the city." And then, when she only stared at the car without responding, he added, "I said it was a matter of timing. Trust me."
What else could she do? She trusted him, and climbed in. As they left the village and found the dirt road by which he'd arrived, she could see that he was nervous. The road was crossed by a locked-down barrier about two kilometres further on, but Belov had a key and the barrier hardly slowed them at all.
Somebody was out of town for two days, he explained, somebody who would block any proposal for her release as a matter of course. They'd have to move fast.
Alina said, "Are you taking a risk for me?"
But instead of answering, Belov said, "Is there anyone you can contact? A friend you can stay with? It's better that you shouldn't be too easy to find."
Alina didn't have to think for long. She said, "There's Pavel."
"What does he do?"
"He's just… well, he's someone I know. He offered me a place to stay, if ever I should need it."
Her nerve almost failed her when, more than three hours later, they came into the city along Karl Marx Prospekt and made the turn towards Arsenal Street, where number nine waited for her like the transit house to a hundred-year-old hell. Belov warned her that she'd have to go in, but he promised her that she'd be going no further than the administration block on the street. She followed him obediently, out of the daylight. Once inside he left her in a dim, dingy room where she sat with her bundle and the firm belief that the cruel joke would soon be over and she'd be taken back to her ward. It had all been a dream; perhaps she'd never even left it. She signed the forms that he brought her to sign, even though the name on them wasn't always her own, and then Belov slipped them into a file under a stack of others and took them away again.
Half an hour later, he was back. He led her to a door; the door opened out onto the street. "Hurry," he urged, checking behind him for witnesses, but she had one more question.
"Why?" she said.
But even his eyes gave her no answer.
She saw him once more, a couple of months later. Somehow he'd managed to trace the block where Pavel lived, and he stood in the stairwell and called her name. This was all that he could do, because the numbers on the apartment doors had all been defaced by the people who lived behind them.
He was turning to leave, when he heard a door opening somewhere above.
They found her file lying open on the desk in his office. They'd suspected him of rigging her escape, and now their suspicions were confirmed. They found no mention of Pavel in the file, nor any address for Alina.
Nor did they find one on Belov's body, when they pulled it out of the river the next morning.
PART SIX
TWENTY-SIX
Dimly doing her best to remember what they'd taught her at school, Diane believed that she'd managed to work out the map reference by the time that Ross Aldridge arrived at the hall. She'd left a message for him about an hour before, within minutes of receiving a call from the foresters' agents. Together they climbed into her Toyota and, with Aldridge keeping the map open on his knees, they drove down toward the lake shore.
Instead of taking the boat house turning, they followed the shoreline in the opposite direction. After a few minutes they passed the first of the estate workers' cottages, two-storey, stone built, and around three hundred years old. After the last of these (which, being the keeper's, now stood empty) the road degenerated into a track, and the track degenerated even more over the next mile until it was only twin ruts with grass between them. Roots had split the ground in places, and the thickest of these jarred the Toyota so hard that Diane had an uneasy vision of the entire truck falling apart as every spot-weld gave at once, leaving her sitting in the driver's seat with the steering wheel in her hands and nothing but open air all around.