Death of a Nightingale

The world was so damned small when you thought about it. Where could you live in peace? Was there a place anywhere where you could hide forever? Not in Denmark, at least, thought Natasha, and especially not now.

She let a finger run across Katerina’s soft white forehead. She had fallen asleep again, on the worn sofa in front of the stove. The warmth in the living room had loosened her shoulders, so that she now lay like an infant with her arms stretched above her head, hands open and unclenched. Her hair was still damp from the bath, and her cheeks and lips blushed in the heat, ruddy and full of life. Right now Natasha was the only one on guard.

She had stolen a new car before she crossed the bridge to Malmö in Sweden, and with Jurij’s money she had bought two frozen bags of corned beef hash in the tiny supermarket they had passed on their way north. Katerina had thrown up twice but had otherwise slept most of the way. The Danish blizzard had not come this way, and after a few hours on fairly clear roads, Natasha had found a dark farm that sat abandoned and neglected under the black pines. It was not a vacation home of the kind the Danes bought and upgraded with heated floors and running water. Here, the old furniture was covered in dust sheets, and it smelled of pine and soot from the oven and of the old people who had lived here once but were now gone. On a gas burner in the tiny, claustrophobic kitchen, Natasha had heated water so she could wash both Katerina and herself, and when she let the water trickle down Katerina’s forehead, she felt almost like she had that morning many years ago when she had stood next to Pavel watching the priest do the same.

They were together, and everything could begin again.

Tomorrow they needed to move on. Through Finland and across the enormous expanses of Russia until they found a corner that was remote enough. Heat billowed from the cast-iron stove in the small, overly furnished living room and made Natasha sleepy, but there were things she needed to do before she could lie down next to Katerina and close her eyes.

She stuck her hand into Katerina’s pocket and fished out Pavel’s old cell phone. With a broken fingernail, she carefully removed the plastic cover on one side and plucked out the memory stick from the derelict phone. She transferred it to Robbie’s little Sony Ericsson and promised herself that this was the last time she was going to use it. Tomorrow she had to get a new one.

The display lit up, and she tapped her way through the menus to the pictures, texts and recordings that were saved on the stick.

With one hand on Katerina’s arm, she listened carefully to the scratched recordings, the voices that rose and fell.

If you were going to be invisible and untouchable in the world, you needed money, she knew that now. But you couldn’t allow yourself to get greedy or careless, like Pavel. He was the stupid one. Not beautiful Natasha.

The voices on the recording sang in her ears, telling stories people would prefer to forget, and as Natasha felt sleep moving in on her, she hung on to the little phone and reassurance it gave her: once again, she had a future.

They would make it, Katerina and she. They would want for nothing.