Jed turned around and looked back toward the road. There was another car entering the forecourt. It was newer than the Zodiac, but it didn't look in much better shape; it was so dusty that even from here you could see the Smiley faces that someone had drawn onto one of its doors, while vision through the windscreen must have been restricted to a couple of overlapping arcs where the washers and wipers had cleared it. He was expecting the vehicle to carry on across to one of the other islands, but it didn't; it made a sudden, tighter turn, and came in alongside so close to the Zodiac that there was less than an arm's length between them.
It stopped level.
Quickly, Jed hit the door locking button. It was something that his mother had drilled into him so often that he barely thought about it, the response was so automatic. He could see the face of the other car's driver. He was a strange looking character, but he was smiling. He raised his hand and made a finger twirling gesture, and Jed supposed that the stranger meant for him to open his window.
Conflicting impulses fought within Jed. There was Don't talk to any strangers, but then there was Always be polite. He glanced back across the forecourt; his mother was at the cashier's window, her back toward him, seeing none of this. No help from there.
But where was the harm? He was safe in the car.
He turned the handle to wind down the window. Nothing happened, and then the glass dropped halfway all at once.
The other car's driver was still smiling.
"A fine set of wheels," he said.
He sounded strange. Jed supposed he was a foreigner. He didn't know what he ought to say in reply.
Getting no answer the man said, "That's Pete's car, isn't it?"
This changed everything. The man was no stranger after all.
Jed said, "Yes, it is. We're borrowing it."
"From Peter Shakespeare, yes?"
"No," Jed said, puzzled, "Peter McCarthy."
"My mistake," the man said. "Sorry," and his car revved and suddenly he was gone. He didn't stop for petrol or anything, just swung off into the night and disappeared.
Nonplussed, Jed started to wind up the window again. He wondered if he'd said something wrong.
He looked across the forecourt, toward the pay window. His mother was just starting to turn around. Knowing her, she'd probably demand to hear the conversation word for word and then rebuke him for being unable to remember most of it.
Better not to say anything, he thought.
And so, when she came back, he didn't.
THIRTY-FOUR
As Pavel had been hoping, the woman had led him straight to the place where he most needed to be. He'd never have told her so much or taken so great a risk if he hadn't believed that she'd react this way; but he'd managed to alarm her, and in Alina's case there was nothing more alarming than the truth.
The woman wasn't entirely naive — she'd made at least one definite attempt to establish whether or not she was being followed, pulling off the road and waiting for no obvious reason — but then she wasn't exactly adept in the ways of subterfuge, either. Pavel had simply driven on by, backed into a blind opening that concealed him from the road, and then picked her up again when she passed. This time he followed without lights, and at more of a distance.
She made the turnoff about twenty minutes later.
He almost missed it; he'd seen her tail lights go but the entrance to the track was so hard to spot, he had to overshoot and back up. Further in, the track climbed and narrowed. There was space here for one car's width only.
The track was rough, but Pavel was floating.
The exhaustion and the adrenalin were a potent combination. The car hit a rut and bounced; Pavel lifted his hands from the wheel and the car went on, steering itself as if directed by the power of his mind alone. Tonight was a night on which he could do anything. He'd already achieved the impossible in finding her; after this he felt as if he could walk on water and raise the dead.
The car started to head off the track. He grabbed the wheel, and steered it back in.
A couple of gateposts, the overgrown remnants of what had once been a wall; at the sight of these and the hint of some kind of a destination, he ran the car off the road and into the bushes and continued on foot. Roots tripped him and branches clawed at him; he'd have to move carefully in order not to give himself away. After a dozen yards or so, he glanced back. The car was just about visible, but only if you knew where to look for it.
He climbed onward.
He could see the house through the trees. There were lights showing, and the black car was out in front. He could see the woman standing on the covered porch before the door. She was knocking.
But nobody was answering.
He stopped and watched her for a while, but nothing much seemed to be happening. He saw her glance toward the still-running car, where the boy's pale face was watching her through the glass. She looked back at the house, again at the car; she was torn.
And then the boy yawned, and that clinched it.
She stayed for long enough to write some kind of a note and stick it in the narrow gap between the house's main door and its frame, and then she got back in the car and swung it around for the descent. Pavel ducked before the headlights swept across him, and then he listened to her engine note as it faded away. Then, pushing the leaves aside, he stepped out into the open.
Slowly, wondering if somebody might be watching, he walked toward the house. He could see why somewhere like this would appeal to her; wooden, rambling, overgrown, it was almost like something out of her own past. He climbed the steps to the porch; if she was anywhere around, surely she'd be able to hear him.
He tugged the note free from where she'd left it, and opened out the paper. Peter, it said. Call me or come and see me. It's urgent. And then the woman's name.
Peter was the one that Alina was with. So any final doubts were now overcome. Unlike the woman, he tried the door without bothering to knock.
It opened.
"Anybody here?" he called, but there was no reply.
He stepped inside, into the silence.
When he pushed open the nearest door, it revealed an empty room. "Alina?" he called, and then he switched to words that only she would be able to recognise. "It's Pavel, I'm here alone. Please, Alina!"
The next room was a bathroom; but in the one after that, he found final confirmation.
It was her scrapbook, immediately recognisable even though it was propped over beyond the far side of the bed. This was her room, he knew; he could sense her presence, almost as if she'd walked out of it only seconds before and left some trace — her scent, her body heat, her aura — that had yet to disperse. He was the one bought the scrapbook for her, to replace the box in which she'd kept all of her old photographs and clippings; they'd been her only link with the life that she'd been forced to leave behind when she'd finally moved into his apartment. That was when he'd felt that Beauty had fallen into the arms of the Beast and that the Beast, for a while, had prevented her from falling any further.
How could she have ended it as she did? He'd genuinely come to believe that she had some affection for him. He couldn't hope for love, that would be asking for too much, but surely he'd deserved better than such an abrupt desertion. Pavel would have run with her, if she'd wanted him to. He'd have done anything for her, and she'd known it. He'd been there all through her nightmares, sometimes reporting for work and going out on the road with no more than a couple of hours' sleep behind him. He'd concealed her, protected her, supported her. He'd understood her, as far as it was possible.