Dan Smith - The Child Thief

‘I made a mistake,’ I said when Viktor came to sit with me. ‘A stupid mistake. I’m old and foolish and careless.’

‘How could you have known?’

‘How could I have known? I should have known. I thought Dariya killed him; freed herself and killed him in his sleep.’

‘It’s what we all thought.’

‘But I should have known she couldn’t do that.’

‘Why not? Anyone can use a knife.’

‘Because the body was frozen,’ I said, finally grasping the dark thought that Kostya’s death had brought to my mind. ‘Dariya had only just left the hut, but the body was frozen. It must have been there for hours. If she had killed him, she would have escaped right away. Her tracks were fresh – the body would have been too.’

I pictured it now, just as Dariya had told it. I saw the child thief dragging her into the hut, tying her and waiting for me to follow, watching through the window, disturbed by the footsteps outside. I saw the child thief open the door, a friendly face, then take his knife and drive it through the man’s throat. The owner of the hut perhaps, or maybe just a farmer from Sushne trying to escape the occupiers of his village, it didn’t matter. The child thief had killed him as surely as he had killed Dimitri and as surely as he had killed Petro. And then he had stripped off the man’s boots, better than his own, and gone out, leaving Dariya alone with the corpse of a stranger.

‘She must have been alone with the body for a while,’ I said. ‘That’s why hers were the only tracks. There was a fresh fall that day. His tracks must’ve been covered.’

‘Or maybe he covered them.’

‘Why would he do that?’

‘So we wouldn’t know where he’d gone. If we found the hut before he came back.’

I looked at Viktor and thought about what he’d said. For a moment events had been clear in my head, but now they were muddied again. ‘Maybe. However it was, she was lucky to get away,’ I said. ‘Lucky she wasn’t there when he came back.’ I shook my head and dragged on the papirosa . ‘I was so sure he was dead. I’m an old fool.’

‘No.’

‘I wonder why he left his rifle, though.’ ‘What?’

‘His rifle. He left it in the hut.’ I tapped the rifle beside me. ‘That means he thought he was coming back soon. So why didn’t he?’

Viktor looked down at the weapon, his face blank. Neither of us had an answer.

I passed him the cigarette and breathed out a lungful of smoke. ‘You have to go on,’ I said. ‘Wait for me on the ridge behind Vyriv, just as I agreed with the others.’

‘I’m not leaving you alone.’

‘It’s the only way to finish this.’

‘You’re going after him?’

‘I have to.’

‘Let me help.’

‘No. Your job is to take Dariya and Aleksandra. Keep them safe.’

‘But—’

Turning to look at him, I let Viktor see the intent in my eyes, and Viktor nodded, knowing he wouldn’t change my mind. I would be alone for this. Alone and focused on only one thing.

‘We’ll take Petro home.’

‘We have no home any more,’ I said. ‘You can’t take him.’

‘But we can’t just leave him here. We can’t leave him out here for—’

‘Petro’s gone,’ I said. ‘This isn’t him any more. There’s nothing left that was your brother. I’ll bury him here.’

We both knew I couldn’t bury him deep. The ground would be hard and almost impossible to break.

‘We have to think about Dariya now,’ I said. ‘We have to think about your mother and Lara. Petro’s gone; there’s nothing more we can do about that.’

I looked down at Petro’s face. His eyes were closed now, almost as if he were asleep if not for the paleness of his skin and the smear of dried blood across one cheek.

‘It’s time for you to go,’ I said to Viktor.

They gathered their things, and Viktor mounted the horse, reaching down to help lift Dariya. Aleksandra put her hands on Dariya’s waist as if to lift her, but Dariya moved away and came to where I was sitting.

Aleksandra and Viktor watched as the child came and stood by me. She looked smaller than her years now. I had seen this girl grow just as I had watched my own daughter grow and I knew her almost as well. She had spent much of her life in and out of my home, and Natalia had always remarked on how she’d seemed older than Lara. But now she looked smaller. More vulnerable.

She looked at me, long and hard. Unblinking.

‘Are you going to kill the Baba Yaga?’ she asked.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Yes, I am.’

Grief expands. If allowed, it can push out all other thought, consuming all other emotion until nothing else exists. Uncontrolled, it smothers clear thinking, can take a man close to madness. I had no time for it, so I pushed the grief into a corner of my mind and closed a door on it. If the child thief was coming, he might be on his way now, perhaps skirting the edge of the lake, staying within the forest, advancing on the place where I now sat holding my son. I had to act now.

There was no way of knowing if the child thief was going to follow me, or if he was too badly wounded to do so, but I had to make a decision, so I chose to wait for him. I would wait a while and, if he did not appear, I would make my way to the place where I’d last seen him. I tried to detach myself from what the child thief had done – the people he’d murdered and the fear with which he’d infected Dariya. I tried to take myself back to the days when it had been my job to stalk men, or lie in wait for them. I would do the same thing for this man. He was no different. He was just a man.

I had no time to bury Petro; that would have to wait until my job was done. Instead, I dragged my son’s body to a place where the trees grew closest, not looking at him as I did it. I didn’t want to see him. I didn’t want anything to distract me from what I had to do.

I dug away some of the snow at the base of a tree and put Petro into the dip, rolling him onto his front, with his chest on the higher section, so it looked as if he were using his elbows to raise his torso from the ground. I covered the rest of his body over with snow and found a straight branch to tuck in beside him, protruding as if it were the barrel of a rifle.

‘It’s just a body,’ I said, speaking in a whisper. ‘Not Petro. Just a body…’

When I was finished, I walked a few metres away into the forest and turned to see what I had done. From this distance it looked as if a hunter had concealed himself in the snow.

I took a branch from a tree close to me and used it to sweep across the surface of the snow as I returned to where Petro lay. It was intended to be a poor effort to disguise my tracks so the child thief would think I was tired and had become sloppy, that I was not a threat to him. My only advantage was that I knew what the child thief was capable of, but he knew nothing about me.

With that done, I climbed onto a low branch of the tree closest to Petro, first testing my weight on it to be sure it would support me. I looked down at my son, seeing only the top of his head and the stick which I had laid beside him. I raised my eyes and looked out into the forest for a moment, then turned and stretched to the next tree, climbing across to it, making my way through four or five trees without touching the ground, without leaving any trace of myself in the snow.

My intention was to drop down now that I was away from the place where Petro was concealed. I would cover myself in a similar way and wait for the child thief to come to where Petro lay, led there by my failed attempt to cover my tracks. But when I looked up, I saw that the oak whose branches now offered me support was tall enough and thick enough to give me a different kind of cover. Something better.