Perhaps she should ask Iva. There were enough reasons to worry at present without having to watch the woods for locals. The day’s humid heat was climbing again and through the open door of the lab came the sound of crickets like a radio silence. That led her to the mysterious Devendra Kapoor travelling silently towards them; and Jericho, of course, always, constantly. Jericho and her father, and the waiting.
Chapter Eleven
She slept badly and rose early, working on lab samples through the morning before being forced to stop by hunger and the sound of Iva’s voice in the courtyard. Coming out blinking into the sun, sparks floated at the edges of her vision and it would be a hot day, she thought, the white-limned peaks suspended against an eggshell sky. ‘Iva?’ she said, seeing her standing at the door to the main house, talking to someone within.
‘Lina,’ Iva said, turning a little too quickly and stepping forward away from the house. ‘You did not have breakfast. You are getting some now, yes?’
‘Yes,’ Lina said. ‘Thank you, I got caught up.’ Reaching Iva, the morning shadow slicing angles across the stones, she lowered her voice. ‘I wanted to ask about the men who put the tag in the tree. Don’t worry, I’m not ... I just wanted to know how–’ she faltered, ‘whether this is it. This protest. Are they done now?’
It was not quite what she had wanted to ask, but it was close. Iva looked over her shoulder towards the main house, then down the track as if measuring distances.
‘I do not know this, Lina.’ Lifting her palms to the sky, ‘They are just boys, yes? Angry boys meaning no harm.’
Lina nodded, also looking down the track towards the forest and mountains and villages, mountain tracks and the battered road to the outside. ‘Okay. That’s what I thought,’ she said, strangely unreassured. ‘I can’t say I blame them.’
Iva did not answer and behind them, Anais emerged from the house cradling her palms in front of her.
‘These were in a bedroom,’ she said in Bulgarian, lifting her hands to show them the small pile of tablets. ‘On the floor. What do I do with them?’
‘Loose like this?’ Lina picked one of the pills up but it was nothing she recognised. ‘Was it Silene’s bedroom?’
‘No, the empty one on the ground floor, there.’ Indicating the windows behind them, curtains drawn.
But surely still Silene’s. Lina held her own palm out and Anais poured the tablets into them with visible relief. Perhaps it was the potential hazard of them, but Lina thought it was more their cost, the risk of accusations of thievery.
‘I’ll see if they are Silene’s,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
‘Good,’ Iva said. ‘Come Anais, we will do the lab now.’ Then, already moving away, to Lina. ‘Maybe you should not go to Beli Iskar, yes?’
Lina stared at her departing back. ‘Right,’ she said quietly.
Climbing the stairs to the top floor still blind from the sunlight, she was suspended halfway between Kolev’s angry gaze and a wolf’s tattered leavings when someone said ‘hello’ from the top of the stairs, and Lina’s whole body flexed. Silene Wiley was looking down at her, one nervous hand on the newel post as she shifted back out of the way.
‘Sorry,’ Lina said, unsure what she was apologising for, trying to hide the way she had started. ‘Morning.’
She reached the other woman and consciously put on a half-forgotten mask. It was, she thought, exhausting. But her father’s injury, Jericho’s solitude as well as Kai’s, and Kolev’s rage were all there in the room even if Silene was oblivious.
And James Hanslow ... shying away from the thought of him because he deserved her whole heart and she couldn’t give it, and couldn’t bear it.
‘There is coffee still hot,’ Silene said. Even though she had been leaving, now she curled onto the sofa, fingers scraping ceaselessly against the cushion. ‘Pour me another, would you? I might go for a walk, I can’t... I’m–’ She stretched her restless fingers out in front of her and examined them warily. ‘Maybe a walk would help.’
Lina held out her hand. ‘Are these yours? They were on the floor downstairs. I wondered if they’d fallen out of somewhere.’
Silene leaned forward to look and Lina watched blood leach white from her face, making her older. ‘No!’ she whispered, standing, ‘No! Where did you get them? They are nothing to do with me.’ And yet she scooped them out of Lina’s hand, knocking some loose. ‘Who gave them to you?’ Wrapping her fist around them, knuckle-bones stark.
‘Anais found them on one of the bedroom floors when she was cleaning.’ Three had fallen loose and Lina wanted to know what they were now, although she hadn’t before. There were ways to test tablet contents, even the black market ones without markings or regulated ingredients.
‘The girl?’ Silene’s hand tightened further, pressing into her abdomen. ‘That girl gave them to you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then she is lying.’
‘Why?’ Lina said. ‘Why would she lie? I can get rid of them for you if you like.’ Pausing, ‘Perhaps Thiago dropped them.’ Or one of your sons, she wanted to add, but didn’t.
‘Yes. No, she is lying. You must watch her.’ Silene was shaking her head, stepping past Lina then going down the stairs with her sharp heels skittering.
‘Huh,’ Lina whispered to the empty room. Luminous light from outside made the shadows pale and stark, and Lina stood still, watching them, before bending quickly to pocket the fallen tablets.
She was sitting at the dining table watching two vultures weave helices in the sky when Xander appeared at the top of the stairs. He gave her a half-nod and went to the counter where the coffee pot still steamed. Lina turned back to the birds and was surprised when he spoke from behind her.
‘Where’s Mum?’
The vultures turned again, one then the other peeling away from one thermal towards the next. ‘She went down a few minutes ago. She mentioned a walk.’
Silence and the high buzz of a fly somewhere in the rafters. ‘Right. Not fucking sleeping then?’
Lina didn’t answer, because she doubted he wanted her to, but she closed her eyes for a moment, seeing her father at their kitchen table, the cat on a pile of papers and tea steeping in his mug. The way he said her name so often, as if he feared forgetting it, as if nameless they might both disappear.
‘What d’you do out there?’
She looked at Xander, startled. Was he thinking of his uncle the way she had been of her father? Is that what this man was for him? The person who held you together? His contourless face was hard to read, but she thought that as well as Devendra Kapoor, there was a simple curiosity, almost bafflement. She smiled. ‘It depends. Various things to monitor the wildlife and plants, some that help protect them.’
‘Like tagging and cameras?’ He sat at the table, the furthest end from her.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But that’s only part of it. Habitat surveys, disease inoculation. Tomorrow I might go that way,’ pointing with her mug, her smile full of the forest, mulch-scented and ferruginous. ‘To try to get a visual on a jackal. A drone would be too much disturbance, and I wanted to check on her kits.’
Xander didn’t speak and Lina studied him, searching the wealthy boy’s sated flesh for his mother’s porcelain bones. He drank from coffee surely still too hot and propped his tablet on the table, bending over it and beginning to tap at the screen. Lina finished her own coffee and rose, but he lifted his head again, pulled something from his pocket and threw it along the table towards her.
‘Oh yeah, what’s this?’
A ragged wool doll, a boy this time, red-shirted and white faced.
‘It’s a martenitsa,’ she said, a little mystified. ‘The locals hang them out in spring to celebrate new beginnings.’ And yet it had also become the symbol of a rebellion.
‘In spring? So who hung it on the front door?’ Xander said. �
�It wasn’t there yesterday.’
Observant, for a teen who rarely looked away from his screen. Lina turned the doll, stained by rainfall, bleached by sun, and thought about angry young men. ‘I guess someone picked it up from somewhere. They hang them on blossom trees.’ She realised that she had no idea what Thiago had told the Wileys about the deer tag in the tree.
Xander frowned at his screen. ‘Martenitsa,’ he repeated, ‘Says here they’re...’ he fell silent, reading, and Lina said quickly, ‘Someone must have found it. It’s nothing.’
The boy met her eyes and Lina realised that she kept underestimating him, judging him on his surliness rather than on the intelligence it so nearly hid.
‘Right,’ he said. ‘Whatever.’ Tapping at his screen again as if she were dismissed. Would it be possible, or permissible, to track his online activity? she wondered. Half appalled at herself, but the look in his eye lingered as she left him and went down the stairs. Passing quietly behind Silene’s immobile form on the sunbed, she caught a fragment of murmured words. Talking to Kai or on a call.
‘You don’t understand. I had to get us out, to keep Xander safe.’
How dare you? Lina thought. How dare you talk about keeping family safe?
An hour later a call request came through on her tablet, an ID she did not know, but her heart echoing in her lungs. Please, she thought, walking out into the meadow as she answered it, wanting warmth and birdsong and to be able to see anyone approaching.
It was her father. She sank onto the tree stump with grass heads softening the edges of her vision. ‘Dad. Oh god, Dad,’ pressing her hand to her mouth because she didn’t know if she was smiling or crying.
‘Lina, my love. I’m okay. I’m okay, I promise. Don’t you worry about me.’
Of course I do, she wanted to say. How could you ever not? ‘How are you? What happened?’ He looked thin, his skin heavy with fatigue.
‘It’s a cut across my chest and arm,’ he said, shaking his head and speaking quickly as if that would lessen the words. ‘Nothing serious, but I need to rest and get my strength up.’
Lina watched the flicker-image of his face and said slowly. ‘Blood loss or a punctured lung, or what?’
A sigh, a pause either electrical or real. ‘Blood loss, mostly. Cracked rib as well, but Lina love–’
‘It wasn’t a mugging.’ Mugging injuries were a slash across the shoulder to release a bag, a threat, perhaps a knife point pressed to side or neck. A wound this violent... ‘Did you see them?’ Not that it made any difference.
‘It makes no difference, love. But no, I did not. It was as we left the train station, it was dark and busy. I’m sorry–’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Dad.’ But he was not apologising for what had happened, rather for causing her any hurt at all. ‘Has Jericho gone?’
The image came perfectly clear in time for Lina to see the heartache and guilt and constant strain of fear on her father’s face before he wrestled it back beneath his smile. ‘Last night. Reluctantly, but he’s ... the people he’s with seemed kind.’
That was what he would be worried about, perhaps more than anything else. And it wasn’t that he didn’t appreciate the danger Jericho was in, but that he trusted Jericho’s safety to Lina and her contacts, whereas he trusted no-one else with Jericho’s heart.
‘They’ll look after him,’ she said, seeing in her peripheries Kai’s figure flitting between shade and sun at the edge of the meadow near where they had found the tag. Monster, he had said, and shadow. ‘He’s got new ID?’ If their old ones had been tracked then perhaps new ones would give them a headstart on whoever had been hired to ... Lina shied away from finishing the thought. ‘Actually coming separately will make you harder to identify too.’ And they must come here now. There was no longer any evading that.
‘Oh,’ her dad’s face lightened. ‘I hadn’t thought of that, but yes, I suppose so.’
‘How about your visitors?’ he added.
Lina shook her head. ‘They’re harmless, and will be gone soon.’
Let him think her haven unsullied if it gave him one less worry, and whatever was here, she would protect Jericho from it. They couldn’t talk for much longer. ESF encryption was the best, but that didn’t protect her father if he was already being watched.
‘Rest,’ she said. ‘Are they getting food?’
‘Yes, love. You will take care, and you won’t worry.’ An order, a question, a hope.
‘I might hear from them before you. I’ll call this ID, but if you have to ditch it then don’t worry, we’ll get news to you somehow.’ She laid her fingertips on the screen. ‘Dad,’ she whispered. ‘Get better, okay?’ An order, a question, a hope.
‘Yes, Lina love. Yes.’
With the dormant tablet resting on her thighs, Lina tipped her face up to the sun, letting it sear the darkness and heat her cold skin, trying to burn away images of overturned chairs, splintered wood in a painted doorframe, a woman’s voice screaming once then silent.
London State wanted her father enough to put a price on his head, and that made no sense unless he was more to them than just the father of an old lover of a supposedly guilty man.
Chapter Twelve
- Volya. You there?
Lina pushed herself upright in bed, looking at the clock and the faint light through the curtains. - Andromeda.
- We’re in BG. Handing over to Daria.
Bulgaria already? Sleep tattered her. - That was fast. All OK? Where?
- Some pursuit. Vratsa. Handover Kost tomorrow 0800. Church Archangel Michael.
Oh god, Lina thought. Oh thank god. - Yes. How is he?
- Coping.
- Thank you, Volya. Safe return home.
- Safe return home.
Repeated like a mantra. It was strange how much latent power words held sometimes. The app window closed and Lina sat in the filtered early dawn, awash with hope. It was Saturday. Tomorrow, at eight in the morning, worshippers would be gathering outside the church and somewhere amongst them Jericho would be standing beside a stranger, a heartbeat away from safety.
As she set the latest batch of blood tests running, Lina was humming softly and when Thiago came in, he paused to watch her, a half-smile on his face.
‘Hey,’ she said. ‘I’m going down to Kostenets tomorrow.’
The smile deepened. ‘Your brother.’
‘Mmm.’ Lina pressed buttons on the machine, then turned to face Thiago fully. They still had twenty-four hours to survive, but she was singing.
‘Lina,’ Thiago said. ‘About the tag and the martenitsas.’
‘I know,’ she said. ‘It was Kolev Asenov down in Beli Iskar. I’ll stay away from there. So should you until we can sort something out.’
He crossed the room to his desk, lowered himself into it. ‘Like what?’
‘Another round of village meetings? Or ... well, meetings with leaders.’ Of the resistance, those who fought to rescue trafficked children, to sabotage State both here and across the border in the shattered furnace of Greece.
Thiago crossed one foot over the other knee, absently brushing earth from the blade. ‘Or we let it continue,’ he said, his eyes on her and black as ink.
Lina studied him, thinking. And perhaps it was because Jericho was so close and she had seen her father’s smile yesterday, but suddenly she saw. ‘You want them to do this. You ... did you tell them to?’
Laughing and lifting a hand defensively, ‘No,’ he said. ‘But I think it has potential.’
‘To make ESF review it.’ Lina turned to the window. The cirl bunting was singing, probably from its favourite perch in the hawthorn. Somewhere further away she heard a kestrel’s high, staccato call. ‘It’s a fine line, T.’
‘Yeah,’ he said noncommittally, so she turned back to face him.
‘If they overplay it, E
SF might just send a taskforce in and round them all up.’
‘I’m keeping an eye.’
But it was too easy to forget that side of ESF sometimes, its mercilessness. ‘T,’ she said.
‘I promise. Nothing bigger than this.’ Then he lifted an eyebrow and smiled again. ‘It might serve another purpose.’
Yes, Lina had thought of that. Xander’s suspicious face yesterday across the dining table, woollen boy between them. But... ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I think they can’t go home till the investigation closes.’ She’d said something of her garnered thoughts to him already, so he understood.
‘She’s State,’ he said. ‘She’ll be more frightened of the unknown than the familiar.’
Because even if State were suspicious of her, that was a cesspit she was adept at navigating. Lina remembered the tablets though, and doubted. She had not done anything with them, but perhaps she would after breakfast. Know your enemy, especially when your young brother was nearly here.
‘That shadow hasn’t reappeared,’ she said. It was not quite a non-sequitur and Thiago shot her an unfathomable look before setting his foot on the floor and angling himself towards his desk.
‘No. Resolved itself.’
It must have done, yes, but the fact that it had correlated, even if loosely, with paths still niggled at the back of her mind. She wanted to ask Thiago about tech or secrets the villagers might have given away, but then she heard Iva and Anais’ voices and the chance was gone.
This Is Our Undoing Page 9
