Nick was balancing a desk light on an empty ledge. Its long neck was too high to fit and it stuck out awkwardly, making its position precarious. He shook his head, obviously unhappy with the arrangements. ‘That’s the best I can do. You’ll have to use this. I’m sorry. I’m working on the lights now.’
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I wondered how I was going to manage. Listen, before you go, there’s something else I want to have a look at–I’m not sure where to start.’ It hadn’t occurred to her that Litkin’s system might have been disrupted. ‘I’m looking for some stuff from the last war. There’ll probably be a diary, and some letters…I know they’re in this library somewhere. Maybe you’ve seen…’ Her voice trailed off as she looked round the crammed shelves.
He steadied the light with his hand. ‘I don’t know. I’m sorry. It’s all just, you know…’ He gestured around him. ‘Papers and stuff.’
She looked back at the boxes on the shelves, wondering what to do. Then she noticed something she hadn’t seen before. In the light, faint pencil markings on the boxes had become visible. 112.33 OTE. She knelt down to get closer. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘It’s his filing system.’ She ran her fingers along the boxes. ‘It goes up–the ones I want…’ She tried to track the numbers on to the next shelf, got lost and then picked it up again. She could feel the tension inside her releasing–the boxes hadn’t been put out of sequence or repacked. They were the way he’d left them. She moved along the shelves. What had he said? Third shelf from the top, halfway along…Here. A box file marked 120.43 PEKBM. She pulled it out and looked round for somewhere to put it. The young man watched for a moment. ‘I’ll get you a table. Hang on.’ He disappeared.
But the box was empty. She ran her fingers through her hair, tugging at it in frustration. She’d be lucky to get another chance at these papers. It would take forever to get the ownership status sorted out–she’d had to resort to a manufactured interest in the Ruabon Coal Company to arrange this visit. And she didn’t have a lot of time.
She went back to the shelves. The boxes were in shadow. She screwed her eyes up in the dim light, trying to read the rest of the inscriptions as she moved along the row, but it was no good, the lettering was too faded. 12_4_KBM. That could be…She lifted the box file out and moved closer to the light. She balanced it on her knee as she opened it. It contained a sheaf of papers, old and stained.
She shifted her balance to stop the box from falling, and lifted the papers out carefully, aware of their fragility. They looked like jottings for someone’s accounts–balance sheets, profit and loss. This wasn’t what she was looking for. She changed her grip to put them back, and something fell out from between the sheets on to the floor, something that had been slipped into the pile.
It was a book. She felt her heart thump, and she found herself looking over her shoulder around the dark library before she crouched down to pick it up. The cover was stiff card, marbled, and the pages were yellowed and brittle. She turned them carefully. They were covered with a minute script, neatly and economically written, wasting no space. The ink was brown with age. The writing went on and on, and then suddenly ended. The last pages of the book were blank.
She heard the click of the door, and a dragging sound. Nick came into view, pulling a small table. Instinctively, she snapped the book shut. ‘It’s a bit scruffy,’ he said, wiping the top with his sleeve and inspecting it. ‘Here.’ He pulled the table into the alcove and moved the light from its precarious balance on the shelf. He looked pleased with the result. ‘That’s better.’ Then he looked down at her crouched on the floor. ‘Are you okay?’
‘Fine.’ She stood up, dusting off the knees of her jeans. ‘Thanks.’
He hesitated for a minute. ‘Do you know how long…?’
‘Does it matter?’ she said, looking up at him.
‘I’m supposed to lock up at nine.’ He shrugged. ‘Don’t worry about it. I’m not going anywhere. When you’ve done, take the door on your right at the end of the corridor. I’ll be in there.’ His face was under-lit by the lamp.
‘I’ll be finished before nine,’ she reassured him. ‘Thanks.’ She put the papers on to the table.
He looked at her working arrangements with some dissatisfaction, and nodded. ‘I’ll leave you to it, then.’ He turned and walked away up the aisle.
She sat down at the makeshift desk and went through the box file carefully. Tucked in among the accounts there was a large envelope that had probably contained the notebook. She looked inside it, holding her breath. There were sheets of paper, folded round something. She slipped them out carefully. The writing on them was dark and recent, and as she unfolded them, she recognized the hand as Gennady Litkin’s. She felt a stab of disappointment.
But they had been folded for a purpose. They were wrapped round a thin bundle of letters written on fragile paper that was starting to crumble along the edges. She pulled the shade of the desk lamp down, redirecting its beam. It was a cheap one, and the mechanism that was supposed to hold it in place was faulty. The slightest movement, and it lifted its head slowly, like a wading bird that had been disturbed, expanding its neck in alarm, cautious, checking.
She steadied it, then flattened out the first letter. She didn’t recognize the language at first. Russian? She only knew a few words. The script was minute. The first line had to be a salutation: My dear Captain Vienuolos…It seemed to be an acceptance of an invitation. She scanned down to the signature to see if she could work out the identity of the writer, but it was an indecipherable scrawl: P…E…She pulled the lamp closer, and the light flickered. Who are you? Who were you? But there was no answer.
She turned to the diary. There was a label on the front of the book, peeling at the edges, and handwritten in ink that had faded. She could barely make it out. The writing was Russian again and for a moment, she felt discouraged; then she realized that Gennady Litkin must have written it. She carefully transliterated the letters she could read. There were two words and what looked like dates. The last letter was
She opened the book. It was, as Litkin had told her, written in Lithuanian. Even though she’d been studying the language for years, she found the writing hard to decipher, and she remembered that Litkin had said something about making a translation. She looked at the pages of modern notes, suddenly hopeful, but of course, they were in Russian. If Litkin had translated the diary, he had written in his own language. Her Lithuanian should be sufficient. She applied herself to the diary again.
Her head was starting to ache by the time she’d read the first few pages. She checked her watch. It was after seven. She had been here for almost two hours. She hesitated, reluctant to pull herself away, but she wanted to check on Hannah who had been complaining of earache and a sore throat.
She switched on her phone. The beep as it found the network was an intrusion from the 21st century. She keyed in Daniel’s number, but his answering machine took the call. She left a message, feeling relieved that she wouldn’t have to talk to him. ‘It’s Helen. I’m just checking that the kids are okay. I’ll see you on Thursday.’ His usual day for having the children.
She was just getting back to the letters when her phone rang. It was Daniel. ‘I was working out front,’ he said. ‘Any reason why they wouldn’t be okay?’
She didn’t
