‘Just a minute.’ Trish picked up the phone and keyed in a number. ‘Professor Yevanov, I’ve got Faith Lange here.’ She listened, then said, ‘She isn’t in. Again.’ Another pause. ‘Are you sure? Faith can give me the–’ Her eyes narrowed slightly as they moved to Faith. ‘Yes. I’ll tell her.’ She put the phone down abruptly. ‘He wants to see you,’ she said.
‘Now?’ Faith was surprised. Since her arrival, Yevanov had been devoting his time to his ongoing commitments in Europe, and was rarely available. Faith’s contact with him had been minimal.
‘Of course not. He can see you this afternoon at one.’
Faith raised her eyebrows slightly at Trish’s tone. ‘One o’clock then.’
As she headed back to her room, she tried Helen’s mobile again, but this time it was switched off.
The 999 call came in at 8.45 a.m. The operator listened to the crackling line, and repeated her message. ‘Emergency. Which service?’ There was no response, just the hiss that told her the line was open. The call was coming through on a cell phone–probably stuffed in someone’s bag or pocket without the keypad locked. She wished the people who did this knew about the time and the money it cost when…
But now she could hear something. A hitching, gasping sound as though someone was out of breath after running, or…frightened, the panicky sound of someone who couldn’t get their breath but was trying not to be heard. ‘Emergency,’ she said again. She kept her voice calm and level. ‘Can you tell me where you are? I need to know where you are.’
The gasping breath again, then a voice tense with strain. ‘I–’ There was a clatter as though the phone had been dropped.
The line cut out.
Jake Denbigh came out of the shower drying his hair. He wrapped the towel round his waist and headed for the kitchen area, checking the fax as he passed it.
He switched on the coffee machine and put a couple of oranges through the juicer. His head was aching. He’d been up late the night before–Cass had dropped in. They’d shared a bottle of wine, then opened another, and later she’d experimented with the girder that ran up through the centre of the flat–a warehouse conversion on the river–trying out its potential for pole dancing. Evenings with Cass tended to be strenuous.
He turned on the radio, listening with half an ear as he poured out cereal and pressed the button on the espresso, letting an inch of rich, dark coffee trickle into the cup. The news was typical for the times–trouble in the Middle East, renewed terrorist activity–Jake sometimes thought that if the human race had an overwhelming talent, it was the capacity to make an already difficult life even harder, often in the name of some uncertain glory to come. Jake had no problems with the idea of an afterlife–he thought that a universe that contained Jake Denbigh was a better place than a universe that didn’t, but in the meantime, he planned to enjoy the life that he had.
He flicked the switch on the radio to get the local news. A Manchester United story was running as lead, followed by an armed robbery the night before. Nothing that interested him. He took the papers out of the fax and flicked through them–notification that his visa for Belarus was through and his passport was in the post. That was a relief. He’d been worried his plans were going to be held up by the bureaucracy of the last Stalinist state. The rest weren’t urgent–he put them in his in-tray for later. He switched on his computer, and got out his tape recorder and mike. He checked the batteries, spares, tape supply and recording levels. He had an interview later that morning.
Jake made his living as a writer and journalist. He’d lived in Manchester for two years now, brought there by a regular slot on a radio programme that was produced in the city, and a weekly column with the local paper, a current affairs piece with a European slant. These days, his interests were shifting more and more towards writing. Broadcasting was good–it got his name out there and he enjoyed it–but it was sound-bite analysis and he was finding its black-and-white simplicity frustrating. He’d published a book on the Rwandan genocides a year ago, looking at the historical impetus behind the horror. It had done well, and now he was seriously researching a second book, this one focusing on the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe.
He checked his e-mail. There was a message from Cass–she must have sent it when she got back the night before. He frowned. She’d taken a risk sending that from home. Cass lived with someone, and the last thing Jake wanted was for that relationship to go up in smoke for what was, after all, just a casual fling for both of them.
He opened her message and gave a half-smile as he read it: Was that Pole-ish enough for you? His current commission was about as Polish as it got. He was writing a series of articles for a monthly journal on immigration into the UK. The final one, which he was currently researching, looked at the experience of wartime immigrants. He’d put the story of the Jewish immigrants to one side–that warranted an article of its own–and instead focused on the Eastern Europeans: émigré Poles, Russians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians. A motley crew, some of whom had made their escape after the Nazi invasion and fought on the side of the Allies, others who had survived the occupation and had arrived after the end of hostilities. He’d spent the last few days interviewing old men, teasing the information he wanted from the welter of disconnected recollections.
Jake’s interest in the occupation of Eastern Europe had begun a few months ago when he’d covered a story about a Lithuanian refugee called Juris Ziverts. Ziverts had been accused of collaboration in the Holocaust, and Jake had befriended the old man. Now, months later, two things stuck in his mind. One was the level of ignorance that existed about the events of Eastern Europe in the last war. The other was the man Ziverts himself.
On Jake’s desk next to his computer was a wooden cat. It was black, half-crouching with its tail raised. It was a replica of one of the statues from the roof of the Cat House in Riga. Ziverts had carved it from memory as a memento of the city he had left behind. He had given it to Jake on their last meeting, pushing it towards him with emphatic nods. It was a gift, made in thanks, though what Ziverts thought he had to be grateful for, Jake didn’t know.
He stood watching the early light on the water, his eyes narrowed in thought, then he shrugged, and sat down at the desk. The clock on his monitor told him it was seven twenty-nine–a minute before his planned start to the working day. He had an interview at eleven with Marek Lange, a Polish expatriate whose story should be interesting. Pole-ish enough…
Most people thought of the émigrés as lumpen factory fodder. Jake knew the stereotype–vodka-swilling, brutal and stupid. In fact, they had entered British society at all levels: artists, scholars, teachers, philosophers, entrepreneurs–and criminals. The country they had chosen to make their home was substantially different because they had come here. Lange was the archetype of the entrepreneur, and Jake needed his story. But, as always happened with any project that had gone smoothly, the last bit was proving the most difficult.
Setting up the interview had been hard enough. Lange didn’t answer his phone and didn’t respond to messages. But something must have got through, because suddenly Jake had Lange’s daughter on the phone who had told him brusquely that her father did not want to be involved. Jake had been planning to give up on Lange–there were other people who would fit the profile he wanted–but this opposition aroused his interest. He’d been prepared to persist, but then Lange himself had phoned, apologizing for his earlier silence and agreeing to an interview. Maybe the daughter had
