The Boat House

THIRTY-TWO

From the moment that he walked into the rendezvous, Pavel sensed trouble.

It wasn't a place that he'd have chosen, but perhaps the woman had thought that she'd be safer if she were to meet him somewhere public like this. She knew nothing of him, after all, and the sight of him now would probably do little to reassure her. He looked across the bar to the reservations counter, and saw two of the staff in a hurried conference.

He crossed to an alcove, and sat down.

It was a three-masted restaurant ship moored in the harbour by the town's market square, and the message had specified for him to be there at seven. He was early, and the bar was empty. It was also an upmarket looking kind of a place, all wood panelling and buttoned velvet padding, and Pavel was aware that he was no longer an upmarket looking kind of a person. He didn't even like to look in a mirror any more; his eyes were so dark-ringed and sunken that it was a shock to stare into them. He knew that he had the appearance of someone who was either close to exhaustion, or long-gone on drugs.

He leaned out, and checked the clock over the bar. One of the staff glanced his way and, on meeting his eyes, hurriedly looked away again.

He wondered how close to the road's end he really was.

A teenaged girl came over and offered him a menu. He said, "Thank you, but I'm only here to meet someone. It was her idea to come here, not mine. As soon as I've had the chance to speak to her, I'll leave. Perhaps just some coffee?" He could afford coffee. Just about.

She backed off uncertainly. He didn't get to see exactly how they took his reassurances behind the scenes, but after a few minutes he noted that they seemed to be leaving him alone for now.

He stretched out a little, and leaned back.

If she didn't get here soon, he'd probably fall asleep where he was sitting. He didn't seem to be sleeping much at all, these days, almost as if he'd trained himself out of the need; but what sleep he did get was mostly in odd moments like this, and then he'd either be roused by somebody or have to remember to rouse himself and move on. It was affecting him, he knew. Sometimes the effect could be a little weird; sometimes it could feel as if as if the world around him was utterly unreal.

He took a cardboard coaster from the table, and started idly to pick it apart. He hadn't expected to be so calm. Perhaps something in him knew that this was finally going to be it, leaving him no room for anxiety.

Well, he could hope.

"Are you the one I'm here to see?" she said.

"The radio message," he said. "Yes, I'm the one." And he half smiled then, and could feel the ghost of a warm human being looking out from inside the automaton. Perhaps she sensed it, too, because she seemed to relax slightly.

They sat down.

"You're another Russian," she said.

"You know all about that?"

"Not from her, but I know about it. The one I don't know about is you."

"So, what can I tell you?"

"Exactly who you are. And why you're so desperate to find her."

The coffee tray arrived, set out for two. Pavel waited until the teenaged girl had withdrawn before saying, "Who I am is easy. I'm the policeman who was sent out to bring her back from the border, the first time she got caught. I was one of those who guarded her while she sat in a cell, waiting for them to decide what they were going to do with her. And after she'd been helped to escape from the prison hospital, I was the one that she went to for shelter."

"Why?"

"Because I'd all but begged her to. Like a dog. If I could have got her out of there myself, I'd have done it. Once she'd been freed, I risked everything to keep her. I helped to search for her by day, I went home to her at night. One evening when I went back to my apartment, I found her with a dead man in my bathtub. The dead man was a doctor named Belov — she'd once told him about me and he'd tracked down my address and she'd panicked. Later it came out that he was the one who'd forged her release papers. I took him out at two in the morning and dropped him into the river. I tried to make it look like a botched robbery. I didn't succeed."

The woman stared.

"My God," she said.

"I know," Pavel said. "I know."

"What will you do when you get to her?"

"I don't know. So much depends. Is she happy?"

"She seems to be getting along. You're not doing all this because it's your job. Are you doing it because you're in love with her?"

He looked down, smiled, and rubbed at his forehead with the back of his hand. "Love," he said. "I don't even know what it means, any more. Being so miserable you'd be happy to die rather than go on living with loss, is that love? Because then I suppose you could say that I am."

"This man who died. This doctor. Something went wrong for her, didn't it? I mean, how responsible was she?"

"She murdered him," Pavel said.

"But was it because he was threatening to take her back to prison, or what?"

Pavel looked at her. She was intent, very serious, and he felt like a man who'd travelled far and seen desperate sights that he could never quite communicate to those who'd stayed at home. Whatever he told her, he could recount only a small part of his vision.

He said, "Do you know what a Rusalka is?"

The woman shook her head.

"You'd call it… you'd say it was something from a fairy tale. A female spirit of the water. Very beautiful, and very deadly. They carry people away to live with them under the sea or in a lake or in a river. It's an old, old story."

"I grew out of fairytales a long time ago."

Pavel looked straight into her eyes.

"Alina never did," he said.

He told her what he knew about Alina as a child; about the unwitnessed death of the simpleton named Viktor and the explanation she'd constructed to defend herself of blame — a story that she'd clung to even harder the more they'd tried to prise her from it — and how, years later, it had been tied in with the incident at the school that had led to the loss of her job, then her apartment, and finally to her first, unsuccessful attempt to cross the border. She'd always said that the reason for her dismissal was a mystery but Pavel knew that it was due to a parents' petition over the suitability of Death by Drowning as an essay subject not once, but more than five times in the course of a school year. The children were having nightmares, and Alina's long fall from grace had begun.

"I still believe she'd have been all right had it not been for the hospital," he said. "The hospitals then were used for punishment, not for a cure. I believe that she was sane when they took her in. There was a line, and she wasn't yet on the wrong side of it. That changed."

"Are you trying to tell me she's dangerous?"

"Belov was like a door that she opened. There was no going back. When we were together, she used to put bread outside the window; one time, I found her trying to drown a cat that she'd lured in. She was ashamed and wouldn't talk about it. But I don't know that it stopped her. Have there been deaths?"

He saw her ready to make a denial.

But he also saw her hesitation.

"Have there?" he said.

He followed her up onto the deck, to the obvious relief of the staff in the bar below. They hadn't touched the coffee, but he'd picked up all of the Sweet'n'Low sachets from the sugar bowl.

Pavel knew that he hadn't entirely managed to get the woman onto his side. He wanted to grab her and face her again, to explain that she was making a big mistake; he wanted somehow to make her realise that he was worthy of her trust, to make her see that inside his raggedy-man exterior there was hope and pain and sorrow that deserved her understanding.

At the head of the gangplank to the shore, she stopped and turned to him. It was almost dark now, just a couple of lustrous grey streaks leaving a trace of the day in the evening sky, and strings of fairy lights in the overhead rigging had been switched on. A faint breeze blew across the deck.

"I don't know what I'm going to do about this," she said.

"You mean you don't believe me."

"Maybe I should go and tell her what you told me. See what she says about it."

"She'll run," he said. "And it'll start again somewhere else."

"Nothing's started," she said. "Now I'm starting to be sorry that I even told you all that stuff."

And it was clear to Pavel that neither of them believed it.

He glanced around, at the cobbled quay and the darkness of the harbour below. The harbour esplanade was still early evening quiet, just a few strollers browsing along the more expensive shops and about half a dozen teenaged kids sitting over at the non-functional fountain.

"She'll be somewhere close to water," he said. "Is she here? In this town?"

"I'm going now," the woman said.

He followed her down, descending with a steadying hand on the rope balustrade.

"Please, is she here?" he said again.

"I need time to think," she said. "Give me until tomorrow night. I want to talk to Pete before I do anything else. I'll leave you a message at the same number."

He stopped, knowing that if he pushed too hard then he'd lose her for good. She was his lifeline, he couldn't take the risk of that happening.

"Please," he said. "Be sure to call."

Without realising it, she'd given him a name. And now, she was walking back to a black car. It had been reports of a black car that they'd been following on the first night, all those weeks ago. Could it be? Could it all be coming together for him at last?

She'd parked at the end of the row on the harbour esplanade, no more than half a dozen spaces along from his own car; but of course, she'd have no way of knowing that. He could see that the interior light was on and that there was a child inside, sitting in the back, reading. The boy looked up as the woman unlocked the driver's door.

She glanced back once at Pavel, as he stood by the foot of the gangplank. She probably felt safer, now she was at a distance from him. She didn't smile, or wave, or anything. Her face was troubled.

Somebody called Pete. The car. The area.

Even if she gave him nothing more, he was getting closer.