The Finisher

4

Maeve couldn’t ignore the voice. She hated putting a stop to her fantasy, but the appeal for help was real. This could only be someone in trouble.

She slowed right up and jogged on the spot, wondering if her brain was playing tricks. She could see nothing except the stone façade of the elegant terrace that lined the left side of Great Pulteney Street, the arched doorways and windows, the fluted Corinthian columns.

The shouting had come from close by, so she stopped moving altogether and stood listening.

Another yell told her someone had to be there, so she stepped right up to the wrought-iron railing in front of the nearest house and stared up at the balcony.

Nobody was up there.

“Down here.”

The voice was coming from below ground level. Maeve peered over the railing into the shaft of the basement. Two wheelie bins and a heap of rubbish.

Feeling stupid, she said hello to the wheelie bins.

One of them moved. It almost tipped over. The rubbish heap came to life and a face tilted upwards.

Maeve asked. “Are you in trouble?”

The response was a sound of impatience, a snort. Was this a mental-health issue? Whatever the explanation, nobody should be in a place like this on a cold November evening.

“I’m coming down.” She found the gate and pushed it open. The bolt was already drawn. At the foot of the steps the talking heap made room. Not easy. This big blonde woman could have made two of Maeve.

She was dressed, like Maeve, in black jogging gear, leggings and a long-sleeved top. Her white Nike trainers looked as if they’d come straight from the shop.

“Did you fall?”

A grunt that could have meant anything. Close up, Maeve could see a trickle of blood running from the edge of the woman’s mouth down her jawline. “Have you had an accident?”

“Accident? Of course I have accident. What you think I do here?” English wasn’t her first language for sure.

“Do you live here?”

The woman peered around her, as if deciding. “No.”

“So where do you live?”

“Russia.”

“Okay,” Maeve said with the patience acquired from extracting the truth from muddled five-year-olds. “What I meant was here in Bath.”

“On Sydney Place.”

Maeve often ran past there. Not far from where they were. Top of the street, facing Sydney Gardens. Top address, too. Jane Austen and her family had once resided there. If that was this woman’s home, she was likely to be one of Bath’s super-rich, a Russian oligarch, or married to one. But what was she doing in the well of someone else’s basement? That might be too much to discover just now.

“Can you stand?” Maeve was hoping so. She wouldn’t care to lift this amount of poundage without a hoist.

“Now I try.”

“What’s your name?”

“Olga.”

“I’m Maeve.”

“You bloody English — so polite. I am here in stinking hole in ground and you want to introduce.”

Olga took a grip on the handrail, braced and didn’t succeed. She sank down again and shook with laughter. The whole manoeuvre had been comic and she knew. At the second try she got upright and gave a grunt of triumph but didn’t look capable of climbing the steps.

“Nice work,” Maeve said. “Put your arm over my shoulder, and we’ll see if we can do it together.”

Physical contact with a stranger is always difficult. Olga hesitated, so Maeve took hold of her left arm and showed what she meant. The feel of a flabby bicep against the back of her neck was not the best sensual experience she could remember. Then the pressure. A sack of potatoes wouldn’t have been any easier.

“Let’s go, then. I’ve got you.”

She put her right arm around Olga’s side. You couldn’t call it her waist.

“Is it your leg?”

“What is this bloody silly question — is it your leg?” Whatever the injury might be, big Olga wasn’t showing much gratitude. “Leg is mine, not some other person.”

“I’m asking if you can use it.”

“Okay, I try.”

Maeve had been assuming this woman was middle-aged. Close up, it was clear she wasn’t much over twenty-five. And pretty. Large blue eyes, classic nose and a finely formed mouth framed by dimples.

By treating each step as a one-time challenge and then struggling to recover their balance, they reached street level. Conquering Everest couldn’t be tougher.

“Sydney Place, you said?”

Maeve had hoped for easier movement up here. Now it became obvious from regular thumps against her hip that Olga’s left leg could barely hold her up. Oh, for a wheelchair.

“How did this happen? Did you fall?”

No answer. Olga could be forgiven for putting all her concentration into getting along the street.

The two women were similar in height, which was a good thing. About the only good thing. Maeve was going to feel the after-effects of this unusual muscle activity tonight and tomorrow. She would end up with a limp of her own.

“Let’s rest at the next streetlamp.”

She extricated her aching shoulders from the yoke that was Olga’s arm and propped her against the lamppost. The relief was bliss. She wriggled her shoulders and stretched her arms.

A car approached and she noticed Olga turn her head, following the movement until the tail lights vanished around Laura Place.

“Are you frightened of someone?”

Olga didn’t even nod her head. Didn’t need to. The answer was in her eyes. Domestic violence, maybe? Would she be better off in a women’s refuge?

“You definitely want to go home, do you? I’m not trying to force you.”

Several firm nods.

“Let’s move, then. Not far now.”

They started again and got to the top of the street and crossed to the side of Sydney Place facing the mature trees of Sydney Gardens, as elegant a terrace as any in the city.

“You’ll have to tell me which house.”

Olga pointed.

The far end. Sod’s law.

When they finally reached the arched entrance lit by an overhead lantern, each grunting with the effort, Olga produced a key and unlocked the panelled front door. She turned to face Maeve and said, “Thank you. Goodbye.”

She was effectively barring the way, making clear she wouldn’t be inviting Maeve inside, and she was of a size to insist.

Have it your way, lady, Maeve decided. An offer of a drink or just a handshake wouldn’t have come amiss.

She was on the point of saying a cool “Okay” and turning away when she noticed something else. The light from the lantern above them was revealing a raw, red line around Olga’s neck.

Olga must have noticed the shocked stare because she clapped her hand over the marks.

“I think you should call the police.”

The whites of her eyes doubled in size. “No. No need police.”

“Who did this — someone you know? I’m trying to help you, Olga.”

Without warning, the resistance dissolved in hot tears and huge, convulsive sobs that would have moved anyone to sympathy. Automatically Maeve reached out to grasp the jerking shoulders. Olga responded with a bear hug, pressing her face into Maeve’s chest and practically wrestling her to the ground without meaning to. She was saying something repeatedly. At first it was too muffled to hear, then the words made sense. “You stay, you stay, you stay.”

Maeve was tugged inside the house and the door slammed.

Aware only that some powerful conflict had just been resolved, Maeve was expecting to be released, but Olga kept hold of one of her hands and led her through a dark hallway to a room where she put on the light.

This woman of contradictions was over her tears already.

“Now we drink tea,” she said in a tone that brooked no refusal. “You sit.”

Good suggestion. A chance for some calm conversation — if that was achievable.

This was a kitchen unlike any Maeve had seen before, designed to make the best use of the large, high-ceilinged Georgian room that must have once been fitted with a range, deep stone sinks, and banks of wooden cupboards and shelving. The original cook and maids would have been wide-eyed at the twenty-first-century version. For a start, it was voice-controlled. Olga spoke some unrecognisable words and triggered the sound of running water inside the white island at the centre. A section of the flat surface tipped downwards and, in its place, a jug of hot water and two mugs popped up.

“You like English breakfast?” she asked Maeve. “Bloody thing can only use teabags.”

“Fine.”

While the brewing was in progress, Maeve marvelled at the ingenious use of the space above their heads. A selection of ovens that looked to be specifically for microwaving and baking pizzas and bread were fitted into a false ceiling, each ready to descend by some miracle of engineering and presumably function at the voice command.

The mugs were filled with steaming tea. Milk didn’t seem to be automatic and had to be collected from a double-door fridge behind her.

“We take to sitting room,” Olga announced, distinctly more commanding in her own home. “Stools too high for me right now.”

“I’ll carry the mugs,” Maeve offered, thinking of the limp, “unless they transport themselves.”

Olga didn’t get it. The hi-tech kitchen had long ceased to be a novelty for her.

The sitting room couldn’t have been a bigger contrast. Small and cosy, it was furnished in the style of the early nineteenth century with what might well have been a genuine Sheraton sofa and matching armchair with reeded mahogany legs and square-shaped seats and backs. The walls were papered to halfway in faint satin stripes. An oil painting of a vase of roses hung above a fireplace with a grate containing ash of recent use. Olga gestured to Maeve to sit on the sofa.

“This is a joy,” Maeve said.

“Joy — what is joy? I call it guest room. In beginning was for housekeeper.”

“The real guest room would be upstairs, I expect?”

Olga nodded. She squeezed herself into the seat of the armchair. The mahogany creaked, but the workmanship was equal to the challenge. “I like sitting room here. I chill here.”

Her limited English gave force to everything she said, probably more than she intended. Maeve decided on some direct talking of her own.

“What were you doing in that basement in Great Pulteney Street?”

Olga rolled her eyes. “Look at me.”

It wasn’t an answer, so Maeve waited.

“Am I fat woman?” No beating about the bush.

“That’s not a word I’d use.”

“In Russia we have many words. All mean same.” She grasped a bunch of flab at her waist and shook it as if she was trying to rip it away. “Fat belly, fat arms, fat legs, fat arse.”

What could anyone say to that? Maeve gave a sympathetic smile, as if excess flesh was a problem for everyone.

Olga smiled back. “Bath is strange place. Many peoples by day. Nighttime I go out. I see no one.”

“At this end of town, you mean? You’ve got a point. There’s not much here in the way of nightlife.”

“Not many peoples see me, thank God.”

“So you like it quiet?”

Her eyes slid upwards in self-mockery. “Fat woman on street in tracksuit.”

“You’re trying to lose weight?”

“Trying, hoping, praying.” Olga laughed again. “I have treadmill downstairs. Exercise bike. Weights.” She pulled a face. “Boring.”

Maeve agreed with that. She didn’t have her own gym in the basement — she didn’t have her own basement — but since going into training she’d tried hotel fitness centres and hated running on a bloody belt. And the music was always crap. “So you go out for a run?”

Olga made a fart sound with her mouth. “For walk.”

“And something really bad happened tonight?”

The hand started moving to her neck again, but stopped. “All quiet on street, like I say. Long line of cars, cars, cars. I am walking past.” She swung her arms to demonstrate.

“Serious walking,” Maeve said to show she was following this.

“And then suddenly” — she snapped her fingers — “this guy get out of car and stand in front. I stop. He has hand on my chin like this.” She mimed the action, showing how her jaw had been forced upwards. “He is strong bastard. I am frightened. Bite my tongue. He pull gold neck chain. Zap — is broken.”

“That’s awful.”

“I am wearing rings, such fool.” Something Maeve couldn’t have failed to notice, a glittering display of affluence that would have appealed to any mugger. “Yes, I know what you think. I try to get away. Down steps, falling” — she clapped her hands — “where you find me.” The simple sentences had conveyed the incident vividly. She’d suffered a terrifying attack.

“Olga, you should report this to the police. He mugged you. He’ll do it to someone else.”

She shook her head and glared. “No police.”

“Why not? They could get your gold necklace back.”

“Not important.”

“I expect it was valuable.” Worth a small fortune, judging by the house and its contents. “The mugger shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it. Unless he’s caught and locked up, you won’t feel safe at home or in the streets. What was he like — young?”

Olga treated the question as if she was playing chess. She made a countermove. “You want cake, biscuits? I have.”

Maeve could be firm, too. “Would you recognise him again?”

She was too smart to fall for that. “So you are runner?”

“Me? Only a beginner. I signed up for the half marathon a few weeks ago and now I’m trying to get myself fit. Do you live here alone?” It was worth underlining the danger of a repeat attack.

But for some reason Olga was laughing at the question, laughter fit to ring the great bell of Moscow. “You think?”

“I’m asking. Do you?”

“Sometimes I think so, too. My husband, Konstantin, he is in Qatar five weeks. Before that, Kuwait one week. Much travel.”

“And you don’t go with him?”

She laughed again. “Too hot for fat woman.”

“Wouldn’t your husband want you to report the mugging?”

“To police?” She pulled a face and made a pushing gesture with her right hand that said husband Konstantin would want the forces of law and order kept at arm’s length. It begged the question how he made his money.

Maeve tried another tack. “How did you hurt your leg? Was that in the attack?”

“My fault. I fall down steps.”

“Whilst trying to escape from the mugger?”

“I think he is running after me, but he is not. Next I hear car drive off.”

“Don’t you think you should get yourself checked at the hospital? You could have broken a bone.”

“Hospital, no way. Questions, questions, questions.”

“You’ve done nothing wrong. You’re a victim.”

“Please, no more.” Olga reached forward. “Give me hand.” She grasped Maeve’s fingers and squeezed them gently. “You are such help to me. If you want, we can be friends. Meet again, yes?”

The slap of trainers on tarmac was a return to normality for Maeve. She was on her way back to Larkhall, finishing her interrupted run. The episode with Olga had been so bizarre that it was already starting to seem like fiction. Yet her aching shoulders and hip testified that it must have happened, that she’d brought different sets of muscles into play. She wasn’t running freely. Now that she thought about it, everything was aching from her toes upwards. Not for the first time she wished she could look forward to a bath at home instead of the feeble shower that dribbled lukewarm water over her. There was a strong appeal about the idea of soaking in hot water and easing the tension from her body. But her mood wasn’t totally down. Olga had been entertaining company, full of contradictions, obstinate, outspoken, vulnerable and lonely, and all of this graced by self-mockery and that lovely infectious laugh.

They’d agreed to meet again. First, Olga had offered the use of her “boring” basement gym. Maeve had turned that down straight away. Nothing could take the place of real running on solid roads.

They’d settled on a lunchtime walk in Henrietta Park as soon as Olga was fully mobile again. Walking was Olga’s way of slimming. It would be slow going for Maeve, but it would do her no harm.

That evening she smothered her sore shoulders with an ointment called Cold Comfort that was supposed to take away muscle pain. Her running guru, Trevor, wouldn’t have thought much of it. He’d prescribe stretching or something equally painful.

While the stuff began to work, she reflected on this latest unexpected twist in her life. In truth, the incident hadn’t been entirely outside her control.

She could have ignored Olga’s cries for help, but if she’d run on, nothing would have eased her conscience. Certainly not Cold Comfort.

I did the right thing, she told herself.

Didn’t I?