A Spring Betrayal

Chapter 53

He started to move toward me. Naked, the slabs and sheets of muscle across his arms and chest were clearly visible. He could snap me in half with all the effort it takes to part a pair of chopsticks. The plaster cast on his hand was a souvenir of my hitting him with the tire iron back at Graves’s house, and his scowl suggested he wasn’t in a forgiving mood.

He stood between me and the changing room, and I knew there was no other way out of the banya, or time in which to get dressed. I moved away from the steam rooms, toward the corridor that leads to the circular pool, pushing through the door as he followed me. He moved slowly, with the curious grace you sometimes see in burly, overmuscled men. He knew I was cornered, intended to relish the time he had in which to kill me.

In the pool room, he took hold of a nearby broom, jamming it through the door handles to prevent anyone else joining us. The pool was deserted, the water impassive, motionless. Light from the windows placed high upon the walls spilled down through the water, reflecting and shimmering off the blue tiles. It looked like a very good place to die.

I moved to the far edge of the pool, so we faced each other. For every step he took in either direction, I could match him, so we remained opposite each other. Theoretically, it was a dance we could carry out for hours, or until someone came to investigate why the pool room door wasn’t opening. But I couldn’t rely on him not having a colleague with him, still getting changed, who would spot his partner’s absence, follow him, and then have me trapped as they closed in on either side. I had to act.

I walked slowly around the pool toward him, flexing the muscles in my back and shoulders. I got to within three meters of the man, his eyes never leaving my face. The light reflecting off the water gave him an almost unreal intensity. I could see every pore in his skin, every hair on his arms and legs, the heft of his belly. The blue-gray tattoo in the center of his chest was of a Russian church with three onion domes: he’d served three prison sentences. The dagger piercing his neck told me he’d committed murder while in prison, and he was available for hire. It wasn’t a hard guess to work out his latest assignment.

I knew that the plaster cast on his hands would be a weapon as long as he wasn’t in the water, where it would become a liability. So I dropped my head, raced toward him, then dived into the water, dragging him in with me.

We both touched the bottom of the pool at the same time, my arms wrapped around his waist, while he tried to club at my neck with his cast. The cold water bit into my wounds like a starving wolf. I kept my head tucked into my shoulders, so they took the worst of his blows. The resistance of the water and the weight of the cast meant he couldn’t really hurt me. I kept hold of his waist, punched his stomach as hard as I could. It was like hitting a side of beef, his muscles rock solid. I clenched my fist, hit him again. The air in his lungs exploded upward in a giant bubble. Still holding my breath, I reached down and twisted his balls. His mouth opened in a silent scream and he started to panic. I let go of him, and pushed myself up to the surface. The pool is three meters deep, so I started to tread water, waiting to see him appear.

It was then I realized he couldn’t swim. He broke the surface, eyes wide in terror, his legs unable to find the bottom, arms thrashing the water and sending waves over the tiled surround. I swam to the far side of the pool and clambered out. If I tried to help him, he’d probably drag me down in his panic, drown me with him. A result, even if it didn’t work out so well for him. I stood there, water dripping down my body, hair plastered to my head, looking down.

His arms waved underwater, the way weeds sway with the current of a river, quickly at first, then slower, losing momentum as his lungs filled with water. Finally, he lay motionless at the bottom of the pool, anchored by the cast on his hand.

I knew he would have killed me, choked the life out of me or held me underwater. I was sure he’d killed before, watching the life go out of his victim’s eyes, replaced with nothingness. Perhaps he’d been the man who’d raped and murdered Alina back at the hotel. I imagined he would lie in bed and relive the taking of life with a pleasure that went beyond sexual feeling.

But none of that made me feel any better about standing by and watching another man drown.