Kate Furnivall - The Concubine's Secret

Edik was out stalking. Lydia spotted his prey immediately, a man carrying parcels. He had just emerged from a tobacconist store where smoking pipes of all shapes and sizes were displayed in the window, and he was far too preoccupied with relighting the fat cigar he was rolling between his equally fat lips to notice the skinny bag of bones tagging along behind him.

Lydia touched the boy’s shoulder. ‘Bite me and I’ll keep Misty’s chunk of kolbasa sausage for myself.’

Edik stopped and narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Piss off, I’m working. ’

‘Don’t let me stop you.’

He regarded her with suspicion, recalling the time she’d made him replace his spoils in the pocket he’d stolen it from. With a shrug he darted forward, tucking in behind two women busy discussing the merits of their hats. Lydia admired the way he glided up to people and hovered briefly at their elbows, close enough so that he looked to others as though he might be with them, but not close enough to cause alarm. Lone youths were always suspect.

‘Mind if I tag along?’ she asked.

‘You’ll get me spotted.’

‘No, I won’t. I’ll give you cover.’

He thought for two seconds, saw the sense of it and let her come alongside.

‘I have a job for you,’ she murmured under her breath.

‘Another letter?’

‘Yes.’

‘No.’

The speed of the no rattled her. ‘I thought-’

‘No. No more letters.’

‘Is this about wanting more money? Because-’

His blue eyes skimmed her face scornfully. ‘Of course not. I just can’t do it any more.’

‘Why not?’

‘I can’t. That’s all.’

‘Frightened of the prison?’

He didn’t even deign to answer that one. They had worked their way nearer to the man with the cigar and the parcels, and Edik was up on his toes, hands loose at his sides, ready.

‘I’ll get you a good snatch,’ Lydia promised, ‘if you’ll deliver one more letter.’

‘Yeah?’

‘Watch me.’

Lydia moved in close. She swung to one side of the man, the boy to the other. As if hurrying past the unsuspecting mark, she banged her hip on his bundle of parcels, winced, stumbled and clutched at him for support. Instantly the man was all solicitude. She smiled her most charming smile, thanked him and moved on rapidly. By the time Edik caught up with her in the next side street, he was laughing.

‘You’re good. For a girl.’

‘You’re not bad yourself. For a kid. What did you get?’

He held out a heavy silver cigar case inlaid with diagonal stripes of jet. ‘It’ll do, I suppose.’ He said it in an offhand manner but both knew it was a valuable snatch. ‘You?’

She hoisted a calfskin wallet from her pocket. It felt well stocked. She tossed it to him.’

‘Mine?’

‘I promised, didn’t I?’ she said. ‘Now the letter.’ On her palm lay the square metal folder. She proffered it to him.

‘No.’ The sallow cheeks flushed a dull pink and made him look very young.

‘Edik! What the…?’ And that was when it dawned on her. Chyort! She should have seen it coming. ‘It’s the vory v zakone , isn’t it? They’ve ordered you to stop.’

He nodded, angry and ashamed.

Then something else clicked into place. ‘Misty? Where’s Misty?’

He looked away. Wouldn’t let her see his face. His fingers were counting out the rouble notes in the wallet but his whole body drooped with an inner misery that seeped out at the mention of the pup’s name.

‘They’ve got her, haven’t they?’ Lydia exclaimed. ‘The vory have taken your dog to make sure you obey.’

Edik stuffed the wallet into his oversized pocket. ‘Bastards,’ he whispered.

‘ Bastards ,’ Lydia echoed.

But she knew it was Alexei. Controlling her the only way he knew how.

‘ Bastard ,’ she said again and squeezed the boy’s arm. ‘I’ll get her back for you, don’t worry.’

Edik kicked out at a mound of ice that shattered in the sunshine, creating a thousand shimmering rainbows. ‘I’ll kill them if they hurt her.’

Lydia slipped the metal folder into her pocket next to where the cigar man’s gold watch was ticking discreetly, and she started to run, slipping and sliding on the snow.

‘Kuan.’

The Chinese girl looked surprised at first, then nervous. She was coming down the wide steps of the Hotel Triumfal and hadn’t noticed the slight figure in the shadows across the road. It was her habit to walk in the park opposite the hotel before it grew dark. She hesitated.

‘Kuan,’ Lydia called again.

She was thankful when the Chinese girl moved towards her. She didn’t want to have to chase her up the steps of the hotel. The blue coat and the bulky hat with its ugly grey rabbit-fur trimming made Kuan satisfyingly shapeless, not a figure of allure for her fellow delegates. Nevertheless Lydia ’s palms were sweating. There was something about the Chinese girl’s smooth face, something you wouldn’t want to cross. Determination was chiselled into its features, commitment luminous in the eyes. Chang would admire it.

Kuan placed her small palms together and bowed politely over them. Lydia ignored the courtesy.

‘Kuan,’ she said, her voice bordering on rude. ‘Will you please tell Chang An Lo that my aunt is ill, so I must leave.’ It was the wording they had agreed on should she ever need to warn him to stay away.

The girl studied her, black eyes carefully expressionless. Lydia wondered how much Russian she understood.

‘You will tell him?’ Lydia prompted.

‘ Da.’

‘Thank you.’

They stood there in the twilight, their shadows merging on the scrubby grass until Lydia moved to separate them. The naked silhouettes of the trees jabbed fingers at them in the wind.

‘Kuan, why did you betray Chang to the Soviet police? You told them about the room in Raikov Ulitsa, didn’t you?’

The black eyes revealed nothing. ‘I do not know the meaning of the word betray.’

‘It’s what you do to your enemies. Not to your friends.’

‘Comrade Chang is my friend.’

‘Then treat him like one.’

The blank eyes suddenly came alive, the stolid body unexpectedly fluid and mobile as it swung to face Lydia. ‘Leave him in peace, fanqui.’

Lydia knew the word, she’d heard it a thousand times in Junchow. Fanqui. It meant foreign devil.

But Kuan hadn’t finished. ‘You have no need of him,’ she said. ‘There are many Russian men you can take instead. Choose your Soviet officer, the one with the fox-colour hair. One of your own. But leave Chang An Lo alone.’ She was close enough for Lydia to see the faint tremble in the corner of her eyelid. ‘Give him back to China,’ Kuan hissed.

Jens woke with a sense of sharp hunger. Not in his stomach. It was centred somewhere in his brain, gnawing its way along the coils, devouring parts of him. He tried desperately to recall what he’d been dreaming about but it had drifted out of reach already, leaving him with just the hunger and a waft of perfume more real in his nostrils than the dank odour of the basement cell.

Today would bring another letter.

Jens rolled on to his front to avoid the constant light of the dim overhead bulb and buried his face in the grubby pillow, so thin he could feel the bed slats through it. Today another letter. From his daughter.

That one word – daughter. Dochka . It altered him. Changed his perception and made a different person of him. It made it harder to bear what he had done and what he was still doing on the project. He groaned into the pillow. He wanted to sit Lydia down in front of him and explain. Don’t judge harshly, malishka . A man on his own with no one and nothing in an inhuman wasteland is one thing. He hardens like the shell of a walnut and over time the soft kernel inside slowly shrivels and dies. But a man with a daughter is quite another.