Stephen Gallagher - The Boat House

What else could he have done? It was this, or lose her completely with certainty and forever — a prospect that he couldn't even begin to face. He loved her too much even to be able to imagine such a thing; Pavel's was the love of Judas, a devotion so great that it encompassed even betrayal.

The Chief Superintendent had a corner office with a view down onto the place where tenders took on loads of aviation fuel from huge land-based tanks. The Chief Superintendent was a man in his forties, with thinning hair and pale blue eyes that didn't seem to blink. Pavel sat gazing out at the loading area as the man looked through a small number of memos and facsimile messages. All pipelines and white stones, it had the look of an alien landscape. The Chief Superintendent looked from one sheet to another and then back again, as if there were certain connections that he was looking for and was unable to find.

Pavel was calm. He was here, and the hardest part was over; he was on the soil where Alina walked, he breathed the same air again. There was no doubt in his mind that he'd find her. A few hours' sleep, and he'd come up fresh and begin to learn the system around here. They'd no internal passports in this tiny country, but from what he'd seen of this building they had computers the like of which the Leningrad Militia could only dream about. He knew her, he knew her ways, he could guess how she'd operate.

With luck, he might even get to her before somebody else died.

"Look," the Superintendent said, "I only just came on and I can't make head nor tail of this. I don't understand why they sent you."

"I'm the only one who knows what she looks like," Pavel said.

"Couldn't they just have sent us a photograph?"

"There are none." There were none because, after volunteering to bring Alina's file from the records department up to the Chief Investigator's desk, Pavel had quietly removed them in the corridor. "I know her because I'm the one who first arrested her."

He'd been sent to escort her back after that first long-ago attempt to cross the border; and with that, it had begun. Belov had studied her and contrived her release… and for him, it had ended with his body face down in the icy waters of the Neva.

"The best chance would have been to grab her on the way in," the man said. "But it was too late for that. All this business last night was an obvious waste of time; it probably wasn't even her and if it was, she could have had five different rides before daylight. The way I see it now, it's best treated as a problem for Immigration. You say she's got no friends or contacts here so she can't get work, and she can't get money — sooner or later, she's going to surface."

Pavel was nodding.

"So when she does, we'll get in touch. I understand there's a return flight booked for you this afternoon."

For Pavel, it was as if his thoughts had skipped a beat.

"A what?"

"There'll be a ticket waiting at the check-in desk. You've to pick it up and then make yourself known to the check-in supervisor. He'll walk you through the formalities and then he'll sit you somewhere and tell you when it's time to board."

Pavel stared, saying nothing.

The Superintendent said, "I think that's all. Why don't you go and get some breakfast? You look as if you need it."

Pavel couldn't get any breakfast, because he still didn't have any English money. He had ten roubles and some change. Other than that, he had the clothes he was wearing.

And they were sending him home without her.

A couple of people got into the lift as he was riding down. They glanced at him curiously. Both of them got out on the restaurant floor, but Pavel carried on down to the entrance lobby.

There was a Dan Air flight coming in as he crossed the asphalt lot, dropping like a gull with its undercarriage outstretched. He was close enough to hear the skid of rubber on tarmac, and then it was past the building and away out of sight. The grass waved in the morning breeze, the yellow frames of landing lights rising from it at intervals like isolated rigs in a weed choked sea.

He glanced back. One of the bigger vans made an effective screen at the end of a line of the unmarked pool cars, meaning that he could look them over without being seen from the main building. Two of them were locked, including the vehicle in which he'd spent most of the night cruising. The third was locked as well, but the keys were in the tailpipe.

He sat in the driver's seat to get the feel for a few moments before he started it up. A hell of a car. Armrests, and everything. When he switched on the ignition, he saw that the tank was more than three-quarters full. After resetting the rearview mirror, he turned and looked through the back window toward the entrance to the compound. There was a security booth at the gate and a drop-down barrier, but when he'd arrived the booth had been empty and the barrier had been up. That situation hadn't changed in the past hour.

His first move would be to find the airport's long stay car park and to switch the plates on his vehicle for those on one of the more recent arrivals. That would give him a week's grace at least, and then he'd do the same thing again in some other place to stay untraceable. He wasn't familiar with the model but he was sure that the car itself would be pretty unremarkable; police vehicles always were.

He reversed out of the parking space, and braked too hard. He was used to heavier controls than this, but an hour's practice would make all the difference. When he'd switched the plates he'd have to give some thought to ways of raising a little cash to live on. He wouldn't need much — he could sleep in the car — but he'd still have to eat and buy fuel. There was no knowing how long this was going to take.

He drove out through the unattended gateway, and joined the morning traffic on the airport perimeter road. He switched on the radio. It was some music he'd never heard before, but he turned it up loud anyway and took a deep breath and settled back into his seat.

She could be anywhere now. Alone, in company, under another name.

But he'd find her.

He was certain of it.

Down at the one-time pavilion that was now the Venetz sisters's lakeside restaurant, Angelica Venetz had decided that it was time for the big old mallard's appointment in duck heaven.

She'd watched him at his breakfast out by the terrace, and he could barely feed himself. She'd wondered briefly about trying to pass the job along to Adele, but knew right away that it wouldn't work out; she was supposed to be the unsentimental one, after all, the hard business head and the scourge of the tradesmen. The two sisters were both in their fifties, both ex-nurses, neither ever married; they'd taken on the restaurant as a late life decision when their father had died and left them a shared inheritance. They'd hesitated for almost a year before they'd made the move, finally spurred along by the fact that they'd grown sick of talking about it. The first two years had been the hardest — there was hardly a piece of equipment in the kitchen that didn't have a hospital property stamp on it somewhere — but things had grown steadily better since.

You'll be doing him a favour, she'd thought, and so as he wandered past the kitchen on a mid-afternoon stroll she crept up behind him and grabbed him by the neck.

His name was Donald. He squawked and he struggled, but she was stronger. The road accident that had left him lame had also worn him down. He fought and he flapped and made little gurgling noises, but Angelica hung on.

And realised that she wasn't quite sure what she was supposed to do next.

She was hurting Donald, but he wasn't actually dying… there was some knack to this, and she didn't have it. So much for mercy killing. Her grip began to slacken and he kicked a little harder, perhaps sensing a reprieve, and he managed to turn his head around so that he could look at her. Why? his small beady eyes seemed to be saying, What did I do?