Kate Furnivall - The Concubine's Secret

‘They took him away. In a car.’

‘They’re welcome to the bastard.’

‘Liev,’ Lydia snapped, ‘shut that foul mouth of yours.’

The big man laughed. Elena smacked him. ‘So who the hell were these people?’ she asked. She was more agitated than Lydia expected.

‘I don’t know,’ she moaned. ‘They were rough. Shabby but wore good boots.’

‘You noticed their boots?’

Lydia shrugged. Yes, she noticed boots. They told you more about what lay in a man’s wallet than any amount of furs on his back.

‘They had hard cold eyes and hard cold smiles.’

‘But were they his friends?’ Elena asked. ‘He told you they were his new friends.’

‘They were no more his friends than rats are friends to day-old chicks.’

‘Did they give any idea where they were taking him?’

‘No.’

‘Did he look frightened?’

‘Alexei would never let it show if he were.’ Lydia thought back to it, pictured for the hundredth time Alexei’s expression as he walked out of the door. His back was straight, his stride stiff-legged, and he reminded her of dogs that circle each other, bristling, before hurling themselves at each other’s throats. She shivered.

‘Elena, I can’t lose him again.’

Liev’s teeth flashed somewhere in the depths of his black beard. ‘Don’t fret, little Lydia. It’ll take more than a rat or two to kill off that bastard brother of yours.’

‘There’s something else.’

‘What?’

‘I remember that one of them wasn’t wearing gloves. He was standing in the doorway with hands stuck in his coat pockets, watching the corridor.’

‘So?’

‘So I was scared he’d have a gun in there. But just as the other two were walking out with Alexei between them, this man took his hands out of his pockets and they were empty. But I saw right across his middle fingers he had dark tattoos.’

Nobody moved. Nobody spoke. It was as if the room had splintered.

‘What?’ Lydia demanded. ‘What is it? What have I said?’

‘Tattoos,’ Popkov growled.

‘Yes.’ Lydia seized his massive arm and shook it hard. ‘What does it mean?’

Elena and Popkov exchanged a look. Lydia ’s pulse was suddenly pounding, a noise like water rushing through her brain, flushing away her control.

‘Who are they? Who are these rats?’

Elena’s face changed. Her concern was replaced by disgust and her fleshy mouth twitched with distaste. ‘It’s the vory v zakone,’ she muttered. ‘He’s in with the vory.’

Those words – vory v zakone – Lydia had heard them before. From the girl on the train.

The Cossack sank down on Lydia ’s narrow bed, making its metal frame yowl like a tomcat. ‘The vory ,’ he muttered, sighing out a great rush of stale air. ‘He’s a dead man.’

Lydia thought she’d heard wrong. She could feel the spaces in her chest trembling and it seemed to shake the whole house.

‘Tell me, Liev, exactly who these vory v zakone are.’

‘Criminals.’

‘A criminal brotherhood,’ Elena explained.

Lydia sat herself down beside Popkov on the bed. ‘Tell me more.’

‘They use tattoos all over their bodies to show allegiance. The vory v zakone , thieves-in-law, is what they call themselves. I’ve come across them before. It started in the prisons and labour camps, but now they’re all over the cities of Russia like a fucking plague.’

‘Why would they want Alexei? He’s not a thief.’

Popkov grunted and offered no answer. Lydia leaned against his arm as though it were a wall. ‘Why the tattoos?’

‘Apparently each tattoo means something,’ Elena said. ‘It’s like a secret language within the brotherhood. And just the sight of the tattoos warns people off.’

‘Are they dangerous?’

They hesitated. It was slight, but she didn’t miss it. Then Popkov clapped her on the back with his great bear’s paw, which made her teeth sink into her tongue. She sucked the blood off it.

‘Come on, little Lydia,’ Popkov frowned at her, ‘you don’t need him. We manage well enough without this brother of yours.’

His eyebrows, thick as black beetles, descended above the broad bridge of his nose, and he only just raised his arm in time to ward off her punch to his face. With a growl he wrapped both his arms around her slight frame so that she couldn’t move. She sat with the weight of her head on his chest and started at last to think clearly.

‘If he’s with these criminals, these vory,’ she said into his stinking coat, ‘the boy will know. Edik will have an idea where to find them.’ She wriggled free and jumped to her feet. ‘Elena, I’m going to need some sausage for the dog.’

Edik, where are you?

Lydia was running down the stairs when the front door opened. The concierge had scuttled across the hallway with the movements of an arthritic mouse to do her duty. She made a note of the visitor’s name, and darted out of sight back to her mousehole at the rear of the house with a speed that should have alerted Lydia. But she was preoccupied, working out where to start her search for the boy.

‘Good evening, Lydia. Dobriy vecher.’

In the drab hallway with its brown walls and half-hearted lamp, Lydia had not even given the visitor a glance. She did so now and her feet came to a halt.

‘Antonina. I didn’t expect to see you here.’

The elegant woman smiled. ‘I found your address in Dmitri’s diary. I hope you don’t mind.’

‘Of course not. You’re always welcome.’

‘I’ve come to talk to you, but it seems you’re on your way out.’

Lydia hesitated. She was in a hurry. But just the sight of this woman, with her long dark hair loose on her shoulders and her fur collar turned up high round her small ears like a fortress against the world, made her want to stay.

‘Walk with me,’ Lydia said and headed for the door.

In the street Antonina’s soft boots struggled to keep up and Lydia made herself slow down, though it hurt to do so. The sky was a sooty grey, sinking down on the city roofs, and nearly dark now. Even at this hour there were queues outside the butcher’s, women shuffling in sawdust in the hope that more meat might arrive. A scrap of belly pork. A fistful of bones for soup.

‘You’re looking well,’ Lydia commented and steered them across the road, picking a path round a pile of frozen horse dung.

Antonina smiled again, a small twist of her wide mouth, and flicked her hair from her collar. Lydia wished she wouldn’t do that. Her mother had used the exact same gesture.

‘You’re the one looking well, Lydia,’ Antonina said. ‘Quite different, in fact. You seem…’ She tipped her head to one side and inspected Lydia. ‘Happy.’

‘I like Moscow. It suits me.’

‘Obviously. But take care, Lydia. There are many whisperers.’

For a moment their gaze held on each other, then they looked away and concentrated on avoiding the patches of ice.

‘What have you come for?’ Lydia asked eventually, when it seemed Antonina was going to trot at her side for ever with no explanation.

‘Dmitri tells me things sometimes, you know. Particularly when he’s had a few brandies.’

‘What things?’

‘Things like where your father is.’

Lydia almost fell flat on her face as she walked straight into a heap of soiled snow.

‘Tell me,’ she said, her lips dry.

‘He’s in a prison here in Moscow, a secret prison.’

More? Please let there be more. ‘I know that much already, but where?’

‘He’s working on some development project for the military.’

Not medical experiments. Not a guinea pig.