Lydia wasn’t certain what made her do what she did next. Was it anger? Despair? Guilt? She wasn’t sure. All three churned inside her. Or just that she was stung by Antonina’s rebuke and needed to strike back? Whichever it was, she didn’t care. But when she hurried to catch up with her companion, brushing her arm to turn her round, it took less than a second to slide the bracelet from the fur pocket into her own.
‘I’ll find him,’ Lydia told her. The conviction in it sounded genuine even to her own ears.
A car drove past, wheels hissing, and sprayed them with oily chips of ice, but neither noticed. Lydia ’s attention fixed on Antonina, on the dark deep-set eyes with the long lashes and the look of secret despair. In that second Lydia saw an outsider like herself, a woman struggling to find where she was going.
‘I’ll help you,’ Lydia said urgently, ‘and you help me. Find out from Dmitri where the prison is.’
‘I’ll try.’
‘Do more than try.’
‘I think he might prefer to tell you himself.’
‘I’ve already asked. He said no.’
‘And what will you do for me in return?’ Antonina asked it faintly, as if she didn’t expect kindness for its own sake.
‘I’ll find Alexei. I promise. And I’ll tell you where he is as soon as I know.’
They smiled at each other, a little ripple of relief. Neither knew quite why, but they were both aware of an odd connection of sorts. Lydia could feel the bracelet breathing hot against her hip. Yet when Antonina opened her pale leather purse, pulled out a bunch of rouble coins and notes and thrust it into Lydia ’s hand, she took it without hesitation.
After that, she ran. To make up the lost time and to keep ahead of the thoughts that pursued her like a swarm of mosquitoes. She scoured the streets, searched doorways, walked the glossy district of the Arbat and dredged the scruffy areas where drunks were already sprawled in the gutters, wrapped in newspapers and death’s icy shadow.
‘Do you know a boy called Edik?’
She asked every street urchin she found. The dirty ones selling single cigarettes on street corners or bottles of watered-down vodka outside the bars. The cleaner delivery lads running errands for shopkeepers. Even the pretty ones who wore lipstick and paraded their tiny hips behind the Bolshoi. A thousand times: ‘Do you know a boy called Edik?’
It started to snow. The streets grew darker as the shops closed their doors and rattled their shutters. She no longer knew where she was, her feet hurt and she didn’t know if it was the cold or the holes in her valenki. She should go home. Perhaps Alexei had already returned. Liev would be growling and pacing their poky little room. Probably Elena was scolding him, telling him Lydia was quite capable of looking after herself. Yet instead her feet kept walking and, as the night and the snow descended, she had a sense that Moscow was swallowing her. She spotted another boy across the street pulling something bulky behind him on a length of string. Pale hair and a long dark coat, shoulders iced with snowflakes.
‘Edik!’ she shouted.
The boy turned his head nervously. In the spill of yellow light from a gas streetlamp she realised her mistake. It wasn’t him. He started to run.
‘Wait!’
She raced across the empty street. He would have been too fast for her but whatever he was dragging along slowed him down and she caught him with ease. The something on a string, she discovered, was a plump piglet. It was trussed, front and back legs, its snout tied shut with a filthy rag, and lying on its side on a small ramshackle sledge that was steadily disappearing under a blanket of snow. The animal looked paralysed with fear, its pink eye rolling wildly in its socket. The boy was no more than eight or nine years old and squinted at her with the eyes of a feral creature.
‘Where on earth did you get this from?’
‘It’s my grandfather’s,’ the boy lied and trotted off again, dragging the sledge over the ruts in the ice, jerking it in fits and starts.
‘Wait!’
Lydia pulled out one of Antonina’s roubles. Instantly the boy became more alert. Even though he had his back to her, he could smell the money.
‘I’m searching for-’
‘I know. A boy called Edik.’
‘How do you know that?’
He gazed at her as if she were stupid. ‘Because you’ve been going round all evening asking for him.’
‘Who told you?’
‘Everybody.’ But the answer didn’t come from the boy; it came from behind her.
She swung round. A man was standing right at her shoulder, a large looming shadow. How he’d come so close without making a sound, even over the ice, she couldn’t imagine. He must possess the feet of a cat. Though he had heavy burly shoulders, his hair was brown and curly and gave the impression of boyish friendliness. In the dark she couldn’t make out his expression properly but she had the distinct feeling that, unlike his curls, it wasn’t friendly. She backed off a step.
‘Dobriy vecher,’ she said. ‘Good evening. I’m looking for Alexei Serov.’
That was when she saw the tattoo on his forehead.
‘You are my son, Alexei.’
‘You are my father, Maksim.’
‘I hold you to my heart.’
‘It is an honour for me.’
Maksim Voshchinsky hugged Alexei to his chest and drummed his satisfaction on Alexei’s back with the flat of his hands, so that their meaning vibrated through his ribs.
‘You are my son,’ he said again and held Alexei away at arm’s length, studying his young captive with pride. ‘You wear my shirt, you use my bath and my razor, just like a son should.’
‘Thank you, Maksim. Spasibo.’
‘You look much better now, clean and fresh. A good-looking Russian was hiding under all that shit and stubble.’
‘I feel better.’
‘Da. That’s good.’
Alexei helped lower Maksim back into the big black armchair beside the bed and tucked a blanket round him. It was made of the softest green velvet with exquisite embroidery around the border. Was it bought? Or stolen? As Alexei glanced round the bedroom at the stuffed birds in cages, he found himself wondering the same thing. Bought or stolen? Did it matter?
Oh, fuck these people. Already they’d got inside his head. It matters. Of course it matters. Don’t forget that.
If this was the price he had to pay, all right, he’d pay it. But don’t be fooled. Don’t be fucking stupid. He had listened to Maksim tell stories all evening, extraordinary tales of his exploits in prisons and camps, refusing to acknowledge the authority of the guards, the beatings he took, the money he won at cards or stole from mattresses. The power he gained within the prisons and now on the streets of Moscow by sheer force of will. He might be ruthless but, damn him, he was a likable man. He made Alexei laugh, as together they relaxed over cigarettes and French brandy.
But don’t forget. Don’t ever forget. ‘So,’ Alexei said, exhaling a series of smoke rings that spread out like ripples in a duckpond and drifted up into the haze that hovered just below the ceiling. He made it casual. Unimportant almost. ‘You have made me a vor, one of yours. Not a full member of the vory v zakone, the thieves-in-law, I understand that. That will take time, and you say I have more to prove before I can be accepted. But you’ve marked me. Your stamp is on me.’
‘It will protect you, Alexei. Keep you safe in this city.’
‘I am grateful, father.’
Maksim beamed at him, wide fleshy cheeks turning pink with pleasure. ‘I had a family once upon a time, two sons. But when a criminal joins the vory v zakone all family must be renounced because the thieves-in-law become a man’s only family.’