Jasper Kent - Thirteen Years Later

‘He claims to be Maks’ brother.’

‘Maks didn’t have a brother,’ she said, with no pause for consideration.

‘Are you sure?’ Aleksei had thought the same, but did not share Domnikiia’s glib certainty.

She got out of bed, and Aleksei heard her walk over to her dressing table. A light flared as she lit a candle. Aleksei watched as she bent forward and opened a drawer. She brushed her hair back over her shoulder, revealing her breast. He still felt thrilled by her. She turned her face to him, detecting his gaze, and smiled a short tight smile that said so much about their relationship. Then she delved into the drawer and pulled out a battered old notebook. She returned to the bed, placing the candle on the table beside him, and slipped back under the blankets. She flicked through the book, not reading in detail, but just glancing at each page, as if looking for something in particular.

‘You know you were always impressed by my memory,’ she said.

‘I still am.’

‘Well, I cheat.’ She held the book out to him; it was folded back so that he could only see one page. It was a blur to Aleksei. He had not noticed many signs of old age encroaching upon his body, but his worsening eyesight was one of them. He pushed Domnikiia’s wrist, moving the page further away from him, and held the candle close to it. The writing at the top of the page was largest.

Snowman.

He narrowed his eyes and read on.

Aleksei Ivanovich Danilov. Captain. Lyosha.

‘What is this?’ he asked.

‘It’s my client notes,’ she said. ‘Every man who ever paid me to lie back and convince him he was the greatest fuck I’d ever known. And to convince them of that, you have to pretend that they made an impression. And to do that, it helps if you remember things about them.’

‘And Snowman?’ he asked.

‘I gave you all nicknames. Some didn’t tell me their names at all. Most lied. A nickname is easier to remember.’

‘But why Snowman?’

‘You saved me from a vicious snowball attack, remember?’

He laughed and she bent forward to kiss him. He felt her lips touch his, but his eyes remained on the page. There was a huge amount of information, with little structure to it, just added as it was discovered.

No uniform. Married. Son. Dmitry. Fingers. Marfa.

Two brothers.

There were dozens of small details about his life, his habits, his interests. And amongst all that, with increasing frequency and candour, descriptions of activities which Aleksei could not even have begun to describe in words, and yet every one of which he recognized with a mixture of embarrassment and pleasure.

The last thing on the page was about halfway down – a single short phrase. The rest was blank.

Miss him.

Aleksei looked over at Domnikiia. Her eyes glistened. He stroked her forearm gently with his thumb.

‘You were very professional,’ he said.

‘Mostly.’

‘But I don’t think we want anyone else to see this, do we?’ he said, reaching forward and pretending he was about to tear the page from the book.

‘Hang on!’ She snatched the book from him. ‘I still need to check things sometimes.’

He took hold of her wrist and pulled her down on to him. They kissed again, then he tried to grab the book off her, but she held it away at arm’s length.

‘Anyway, why are you showing me this now?’ he asked.

She rolled off him and turned her attention back to the book. ‘Because of Maks,’ she said.

Aleksei was glad she had her back to him, so that she couldn’t see the smile on his face deflate. It was no secret that she had slept with Maks, but it had for years been unspoken. There was nothing wrong in it. It was her job, but the depth of Aleksei’s affection meant that it pained him even now; not his affection for Domnikiia, great though that was, but his affection for Maks.

‘Here we are,’ she said, showing him another page, but keeping her hand over the bottom half.

Robespierre.

Eyeglasses. Maksim. Maks. Lukin.

The nickname was apt. Domnikiia had shown an appreciation for Maks’ true nature that Aleksei had only learned much later. He scanned further down the pages.

Mother in Saratov. Yelizaveta Malinovna. Two sisters.

Only brother died in infancy. Don’t bring up. Innokyentii.

‘Innokyentii – that’s the name he’s using. Or, at least, Kyesha.’

‘So he’s not Maks’ brother, but he knows what he’s talking about,’ said Domnikiia. Aleksei had to agree, but his mind had already moved on from there. He’d never heard of Maks having a brother until Kyesha had mentioned it. Now he could see, almost at first hand, that the idea was based on fact. The question that now presented itself was, how had Kyesha got the information? He couldn’t help wondering whether the answer was staring him in the face.

‘Let me see the rest,’ he said. Domnikiia’s hand still covered the bottom of the page.

‘No!’ she exclaimed. ‘You don’t really want to see what it was that turned Maks on, do you?’

‘Don’t be silly. What I want to see is if there are any other details I can use to check whether Kyesha has got his facts right.’

Domnikiia reluctantly removed her hand. The paper beneath it was blank.

‘There wasn’t really anything very special about him,’ she said, as though it were a confession. ‘But I didn’t have very long to get to know him before you scared him off.’

Aleksei could understand how she might want to protect Maks’ memory by hiding how small an impression he had made on her, but it did not matter. Maks’ greatness had lain elsewhere. The more significant discovery was that Kyesha had not got his information from this book. It was preposterous to think that he might have, but the seeds of doubt Iuda had sown could germinate at any time, however stony the ground might appear.

‘So is he a vampire, this Kyesha?’ asked Domnikiia.

‘I don’t know, but it’s a possibility.’

‘And will you kill him, if he is?’

Aleksei nodded. ‘Oh, yes.’ It was a conclusion he had come to within hours of first discovering that the voordalak was more than a phantom from his grandmother’s tales – that all such creatures must die. Nothing he had learned about them since had changed his mind. It had to be said, though, that beyond those he had encountered in 1812, he had not come across a single other example of the species. He had been on several wild goose chases since then – six, to be precise – but they had all ended in natural explanations, fortunately for the suspects in question. He would treat Kyesha with the same dispassion.

Domnikiia took the book and put it back in the drawer. Then she snuffed out the candle and crawled back into bed beside Aleksei. They lay in silence for several minutes, but her breathing did not slow down to the settled murmur of sleep.

‘Do you have to?’ she asked eventually.

‘He’s come after me. I have to do something.’

‘What does he want?’

‘I don’t know, yet.’

‘You were lucky before, you know that. And now you have Tamara to think of.’

‘I had Dmitry then,’ he said. She rolled over so that her back faced him and said nothing more, but he knew that she understood what he had to do, for both his children. He reached over and his hand found hers. Her five fingers squeezed his three.

Aleksei could not guess how long he had lain there. He had not slept, nor had he been wide awake, but as the day’s events tumbled through his mind he had realized that there was one problem, quite unrelated to Kyesha, that he had to deal with. He pulled his hand away from Domnikiia. In sleep, her fingers did not try to restrain him. He slipped on his robe and went into the next room.