“Long-time runner. Marathon two hours twenty-five minutes.”
“That’s awesome, Olga. It’s almost world class. When does he train?”
“After work. Even in Qatar, temperature thirty-five, forty, he run.”
“I’m impressed. You didn’t tell me. I feel very inferior talking to you about my modest efforts.”
“In marathon world, he is nothing. Rubbish.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“I can say.” She returned a wave from one of her admirers. “All this training and he does not go faster. Two hours twenty-five I put on his gravestone.”
Maeve felt some sympathy for Konstantin.
Olga hadn’t finished putting him down. “Everyone else get better. You go more kilometre. Me, I burn much fat. Stupid prick Konstantin train and train and stay same.” Whatever deficiencies she had in English grammar, she was well equipped to badmouth her husband.
“So why does he do it?”
“Good question.”
“I expect it’s the joy of running. When I started, I didn’t want to go out at all, but now I’m beginning to get pleasure from it.”
Olga’s tone became friendlier. “This I like to know, how you start.”
“There’s no mystery to it. I’m doing it for charity.” The full story was too complicated to explain. Trying to describe the Toby jug and why it was such a loss would take the rest of the morning. “If I can run the half marathon it will help the British Heart Foundation.”
“Nice. I like Turner, Gainsborough, Constable.”
Maeve had to think about that. Then she laughed. “Heart, not art.” She pointed to her chest. “Medical research.”
Smiling, Olga said, “British Heart Foundation?”
“You’ve got it. I’ve been raising funds, so I can’t give up.”
“How much you raise?”
“So far? Almost a thousand pounds.”
“So, thousand. I tell Konstantin and we give five hundred.”
Maeve’s legs almost folded under her. “But Konstantin doesn’t even know me.”
“I tell him tonight. He can afford, capitalist pig. Run many marathons, never for charity. You take cheque?”
“That would be wonderful. If you’re serious I’ll bring a sponsorship form next time I see you.” Stunned by the amount, she continued jogging in silence for some distance. She couldn’t peel off and walk away directly after such a generous pledge, but what could she say next? A remark about the weather would seem ungrateful.
She thought of something. “Now that I’ve told you how I started, how about you, Olga? I know you’re in serious training to lose weight, but what’s behind this big change in your life?”
“You want me to tell?” Olga gave one of her chesty laughs.
“Is it funny?”
“I think so. Big joke. Is for Konstantin.”
“You’re doing it for him?”
Another burst of laughter. “He think so.”
“But you aren’t?”
“One time before he go to Qatar he say I am elephant woman, fat cow, good for nothing. Too much eating, not enough exercise.”
“That’s so unkind.”
“But he is right.”
“Not anymore, he isn’t.”
“So I tell Konstantin I need personal trainer and” — she snapped her fingers — “he find.”
“You have a personal trainer?”
“Sure. Don’t you have?”
Maeve thought of Trevor. She refused to call him a trainer. He was the self-appointed consultant she didn’t like to consult because it might encourage him to come calling. “No, I do my own thing. But good for you, getting organised. You go to a gym now?”
“Jim? Who is this Jim? My trainer, he is Tony.”
“Misunderstanding. Tony it is. I mean, where do you see him?”
“Come to house, Monday, Thursday, downstairs in exercise hall, make me fit.”
Exercise hall? Maeve was reminded that her new friend lived on another social plane.
“Is he any good?”
Olga’s shoulders started shaking, the beginning of another bout of laughter. “He is good, yes. Very, very good. Like film star. Dark hair, nice teeth, sexy eyes. Gorgeous. Touch me and I want to grab.”
“Oh, my.”
“Cute little bum I could bite.”
“Yikes.”
“Now I do everything Tony say. Everything. Take walks, eat no cake, chocolates, pasta, and he is big smile.”
“Pleased with you?”
“You bet.”
“Has it gone any further?”
“Has what?”
“Like kissing?”
“Sod bloody kissing. One day soon, please God, Tony get close, measure waist and we...” She raised both arms, puffed out her chest and shouted a word in Russian that Maeve had no difficulty understanding.
This time it was Maeve who was laughing.
“You tell no one, eh?” Olga said, turning to give her a sudden, ferocious look.
8
Spiro swung around.
“You?”
Big surprise.
Huge relief.
He wasn’t eye to eye with the Finisher, as he feared, but another of the work party.
Murat. Tall, shambling, soulful Murat, the giant of the gang and the most often picked on for poor work even though his was no worse than anyone else’s. Being two metres high makes you stand out.
In Albanian, Spiro said, “You nearly gave me a heart attack. I thought you were the gangmaster.”
Murat shrugged his broad shoulders. He’d been a wrestler in the old days, but there wasn’t much muscle left on him after months of underfeeding and hard labour.
“How did you find me?” Spiro asked.
“Followed you.”
“Oh, Christ.”
“You ran, so I did.”
“He’ll kill us both. You know he killed Vasil.” Everyone knew about Vasil, the only other idiot to try to escape. They were told repeatedly that he was dead.
“Vasil wasn’t smart,” Murat said. “He got caught before he’d gone a few steps. You’re smart.”
“Smart? I’m fucking crazy to try. Did he see you go?”
“Sure.”
How could he sound so complacent?
Some quick thinking was wanted here. “We’ve got to hoof it, then, and fast. Why don’t you go that way, under the bridge, and I’ll head in the other direction?”
Murat blinked and didn’t appear to grasp the logic.
“He can’t follow us both. One of us gets away, see?”
Murat took a few seconds to ponder the plan. He seemed to have an inkling who was the more likely to get lucky. “I’m coming with you. Then we both get away.” His faith in Spiro’s competence would have been touching if it weren’t so dangerous.
“No way,” Spiro said. “I’m going alone.”
There wasn’t time to stand arguing. Spiro started running again as well as he could, southwards along the tree-lined towpath beside the river, hoping to shake off Murat. However, the big man followed close behind, breathing heavily. Neither would keep this up for long. The best hope was that the Finisher would give up before they did, but that wasn’t likely. Two escapees were seriously bad news for him. He, too, would be in deadly peril if word got back to the high-ups.
Four minutes on, they reached the cover of a railway bridge. In the shadow of the arch, Spiro leaned against the grimy stonework and tried to collect his breath.
Murat said, “I don’t see him. I think he lost us.”
“You’re a fucking optimist,” Spiro said. “Likely as not, he’ll have used a car and be waiting for us round the next bend.”
“He didn’t see which way we went.”
“He’s only got to ask. A guy your size followed by me is going to be noticed. That’s why we should split up.”
Murat was having none of it. “I’d be lost. I don’t know where we are.”
“And you think I do? Ever heard of a place called Bath? That’s where we are, and I only know because I saw it on the side of a building. I’ve no more idea how to survive in it than you have.”