The Good Thieves

by Katherine Rundell

  She thought of Westerwicke’s laughing face, and Sorrotore’s fireside words. ‘Do you know what happens to people who come to my apartment and accuse me of lying to my face?’

  Vita wrapped her coat more tightly around her body. The ache in her foot was growing vivid, and she felt suddenly small, barely big enough to breathe, in a large and adult world.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Vita let herself into the apartment, twisting the doorknob as carefully as if it were glass. She’d been gone for far longer than she intended; her mother would already have left to meet Grandpa’s bank manager, and Vita prayed her absence from her bed had not been noticed. She smelt slightly of horse, and bird, and her cheeks were flushed.

  The apartment was silent. She tiptoed to her bedroom and pushed the ring under the bed; then hesitated, her arm still deep under the mattress. What if Sorrotore found out where she lived? She took a needle and thread, unpicked an inch of the hem of her skirt, and tucked the ring inside, sewing it tightly to the lining. She was just biting off the thread when Grandpa knocked.

  ‘Are you awake?’

  Vita opened the door, and saw her grandfather wrapped in his green woollen coat. It looked far too big for him now, but he was smiling, and the spark was still in his eyes.

  ‘Put this on, Rapscallion,’ and he handed her his red woollen scarf. ‘I’ve been inside too long. We’re going to the Park.’

  The leaves in Central Park were a bright, stark red against the blue of the sky, and coated the ground like a carpet. They followed the paved pathways, down winding tree-lined trails, Grandpa swinging his stick. A Black woman dressed in an ankle-length coat went briskly past, pushing a cart selling hot chocolate. Grandpa saw Vita’s imploring face, and gave her a coin.

  ‘Get yourself the largest and thickest hot chocolate she has.’ He creaked down on to a bench. ‘I shall wait here, and commune with the squirrels.’

  Vita went, as fast as she could, down the twisting tree-lined path. It forked; the woman was nowhere in sight, so she turned left, on to the wider avenue. Her limp was worse than usual, but the chocolate was beckoning.

  The man came out of nowhere, rounding the corner.

  ‘Hey! Hey! You!’

  Vita froze. He was broad-shouldered and sandy-haired, and much younger than she had thought he was at the party. His eyes were pale grey, and they darted over her feet and leg, her red-brown hair. Dillinger, she thought.

  ‘You were that kid at Sorrotore’s party!’ His voice was high, with a rasp to it that suggested cigarettes and alcohol.

  Vita tried to look unafraid. ‘What if I was?’

  ‘What have you done with it?’

  ‘Done with what?’

  ‘The ring, you little brat! Where’s the ring?’ He slurred on the word ‘where’s’, and she wondered whether it was anger or early morning drink.

  Vita tried to keep her face and body utterly still. Only her heart defied her. ‘What ring?’ she said.

  ‘Don’t be cute, kid. Sorrotore tore the study apart looking for that ring. There’s nobody else who could’ve taken it.’ His clothes were loud and expensive, but had the rumpled look of someone who had not yet gone to bed. His silver wristwatch had not been wound, and pointed to midnight.

  ‘I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.’ The ring, inside the sewn-up hem of her skirt, was pressing against her leg.

  ‘Listen, kid.’ He leaned down, his face close to hers. ‘You don’t know what you’re dealing with. Things aren’t so good for the boss right now. He’s unpredictable. Hand it over, and he’ll forget it.’

  ‘I don’t have any ring! I don’t know what you’re talking about.’ It was broad daylight, but the path had taken her out of Grandpa’s view, and there was nobody in sight. She wondered if he would hear her scream. And what if he did hear, but couldn’t help? The thought made her bite her lips together.

  He grabbed her upper arm. ‘So you won’t mind me searching you, I guess?’

  ‘Let go of me!’

  A sudden something flew out of the air and struck the man on the shoulder. Vita looked down; it was a rock, as large as her palm.

  ‘Step away!’ Grandpa came striding down the pathway, leaning on his stick, his eyes ice cold. His voice as he reached them, though, was steady. ‘I would be grateful if you’d explain what the hell you think you’re doing touching my granddaughter?’

  Dillinger stepped backwards, but kept his eyes on Vita. ‘I wasn’t doing anything. This kid of yours stole something from my boss.’

  Grandpa moved in front of Vita, shielding her from the man. ‘And who would your boss be?’

  ‘Victor Sorrotore.’

  Grandpa’s eyes glanced round at Vita, but he remained facing Dillinger. ‘I find it incredibly unlikely that my granddaughter would steal anything. And since your employer has stolen my entire home, I would say that if by some extraordinary chance she has, he is scarcely in a position to complain.’

  ‘Make her turn out her pockets!’

  ‘You’re ridiculous,’ said Grandpa. ‘Leave, now, or I’ll shout for the police.’

  Dillinger reached into his jacket. ‘I wouldn’t do that, you know,’ he said.

  When his hand came out, it held a small pistol. He did not point it at them, but dangled it loose in his hand.

  Vita froze, staring at the gun. The barrel was barely bigger than her thumbnail, and yet it looked large enough to eclipse the sun. Dillinger handled it with the ease of a man who was accustomed to using a weapon to make a point.

  Grandpa’s eyes widened with shock, then narrowed with rage. ‘Police!’ he roared, his old voice lifting above the trees. ‘Police! Help!’

  ‘You senile old fool.’ Dillinger was stumbling backwards, nostrils flaring. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing! You’re playing with fire, kid.’ And he ran. The path forked, one broad and one narrow, and he darted down the narrow path. In the centre was a manhole and, through the trees, Vita watched in astonishment as he hauled up the cover, and dropped down into the darkness below.

  ‘He went into the sewer!’ she said, but Grandpa had not seen: his eyes were on her face, and he seemed uninterested in anything else.

  ‘Do you want to explain what’s going on? You went to see Sorrotore?’

  Vita hesitated; then nodded.

  Grandpa’s eyes were dark. ‘Why? Why would you do a thing so obviously, criminally, stupidly dangerous?’

  ‘I just … Nothing happened. I wanted to see what he looked like.’

  ‘And have you seen, now?’ Grandfather’s voice was tight. ‘Have you seen what kind of man he is?’

  Slowly, looking down at her left foot, Vita nodded.

  ‘Will you promise not to go looking for him again? Ever? Promise, or I can never let you go out alone.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. It wasn’t a lie, she told herself. It was not Sorrotore she was looking for. And if he was looking for her, that was something very different. She had made no promise there.

  Grandpa gave a great sigh, and he turned to sit on a tree stump at the edge of the path. His face was white, and though there was still fury in his eyes, it was directed inwards. ‘Oh, my love. What have I done? I’ve put you in the way of such ugliness.’

  ‘You haven’t! Truly. I swear, I’ll be careful.’

  With one hand, she reached out and took Grandpa’s hand. With the other, she reached into her pocket and felt for the red book. She rolled it up into a tube and clenched her fingers around it. She held her plan in her fist: a weapon, of sorts.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Vita waited until the sun had fully set before she scattered the birdseed on the inside window sill. The day birds had all gone to roost, and no pigeons came to peck at it.

  She sat next to it and waited; and waited. She was almost asleep when there was a flurry of wings and of bright eyes, and a crow landed on her window sill and began to devour the seed.

  The bird had a tiny roll of paper tied to its foot.

&nbs
p; Taking a letter off a bird’s foot is infinitely harder, Vita discovered, than it is made to sound in books. The bird flapped round and round her room with Vita in gently urgent pursuit, and it was not until she thought to offer it the ginger snap she had been saving that it stayed still long enough for her to unwind the three wraps of string that held it in place.

  The note read: ‘Come to the entrance of Carnegie Hall at 11.20 p.m. Don’t be even a minute late. Eat this note.’

  Vita looked at the note, which had suffered somewhat from its proximity to the bird’s rear end, and decided not to eat it. She flushed it down the lavatory instead.

  Arkady was waiting behind one of the front doors of the Hall, watching through a crack, and he pulled it open before she could wonder whether to knock.

  ‘Come! A night guard patrols, but he only does the ground floor. He’s just gone past. Quickly!’

  He led Vita through the great hall, lit only by the street lamps outside, and into the lift. ‘Second floor,’ he said. ‘The Chapter Hall.’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘It’s like a tiny stage: just two hundred people. The main hall takes nearly three thousand. There’s a rig in the Chapter.’

  ‘What kind of rig?’

  ‘Trapeze, obviously!’ He looked shocked at her ignorance. ‘The rig belongs to the Sabatini Sisters, but they don’t mind Samuel using it. Or at least, they wouldn’t mind if they knew. It has to be secret.’

  ‘What does?’

  ‘Samuel! He’s training to be an acrobat.’

  ‘Why does it have to be secret?’

  ‘Because he comes from a horse family.’ He shook his head at her, as if this were obvious. ‘He has to join his uncle’s act. It’s why he’s here – to learn horsemanship.’

  ‘But couldn’t he just ask—’

  ‘No. Circus families work like royalty – you do what your parents did, by birthright. You get no more choice about it than Tsar Alexander had about being Tsar. Which is OK for me – I’ve always known I wanted to work with animals: with dogs and horses and birds.’

  Vita thought of how his face had shone, bright as torchlight, as he rode Moscow across the sleeping city, and nodded.

  ‘But the problem is, Samuel is a great aerial artiste,’ said Arkady. She smiled at the word ‘artiste’, but his face was utterly serious. ‘He taught himself, by watching – like people teach themselves tunes on a piano, you know? Except on his own body, and now he can’t unlearn it. So.’

  ‘But that’s not fair!’ said Vita.

  Arkady shrugged. ‘I know. But have you tried saying that to an adult recently?’

  ‘That doesn’t mean you can’t change it. Nothing’s unchangeable!’

  But Arkady was running ahead. ‘Come – here!’

  The room was wooden-floored with wood panelling and a high ceiling. Chairs were laid out along three sides of the room, a single lamp was lit. The room smelt of sweat and chalk.

  In the middle of the room were what looked like four rugby goal posts. Attached to the two posts at either end were platforms; from the middle two hung what looked like small iron swings. Beneath them was a net. At the top of one platform was a boy, standing on one leg, the other held high above his head.

  ‘Samuel!’ called Arkady. ‘She’s here.’

  The boy turned, and grinned, but went immediately back to his stretching; and Vita quietly reminded herself to blink.

  Samuel was beautiful; and his beauty was of the kind that makes your lungs temporarily forget their function. He was clad entirely in black – black cotton trousers, a black singlet, black bands at his wrist, black ballet shoes. His hair was cropped close to his head, and his cheekbones slanted across his face like twin cliff-edges. He set both hands on the platform and kicked himself into a handstand.

  ‘Talk now or later?’ asked Arkady.

  ‘Later,’ said Samuel, upside down. He barely seemed to have registered Vita’s presence. ‘I’m trying something new.’ His accent was New York, but with something else: a length and depth to the vowels that suggested a different mother tongue.

  Samuel flipped upright, dipped his hands in chalk, picked up a long pole with a crook at the end of it, and, leaning out over the edge of the platform, used it to draw the iron swing towards him. He caught hold of it with one hand, leaning out over the net with just his heels on the platform.

  He looked down at Arkady, and his face was rigid with concentration.

  ‘Call me in?’ he said.

  Arkady shouted back, ‘Listo!’

  ‘Listo?’ whispered Vita.

  ‘Spanish for “ready”.’

  Samuel shifted his weight. ‘Ready!’

  ‘Hep!’ called Arkady.

  And Samuel cast himself off into the air, both hands on the bar of the trapeze, flying. At the peak of the swing, he let go, somersaulted in the air above the bar, and hooked back on to it with his knees. Vita’s stomach lurched.

  The boy spun upright, grasped the ropes on either side of the swing, and stood up on the bar. He swayed his body back and forth, and the swing soared, so high that at its peak he was facing directly downwards and Vita caught a fleeting glimpse of his face. Then, without the slightest noise, he let go and dropped forward, spinning a full circle in the air, up and over the swing with only his ankle hooked over the bar.

  Vita gasped. It wasn’t just the way he dropped through the air, as if gravity had granted him a special dispensation; it wasn’t just his flight. It was the look that had transformed his face.

  Samuel’s jaw was set, and he did not smile, but there was something strange and prodigious and fer­­ocious on his countenance. It was the joy of someone doing the thing they were born to do.

  Vita did not know for how long Samuel swung, and spun, and cast his body kaleidoscope-wise. She only knew that she didn’t want him to stop. Then, as the swing rose higher and higher, he let go and spun in a double somersault, falling as the swing fell, reached out to grab it, missed, and fell into the net.

  He sat up, his eyes shining.

  ‘New trick?’ called Arkady.

  ‘Didn’t work,’ said Samuel, standing in the net and brushing off his hands. ‘Did you see what went wrong?’ Up close he was slight and lean, but with large hands and feet that said he would be tall, some day.

  ‘You were on the downswing,’ said Arkady. ‘I think maybe two-thirds of a second too late,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know if it’s possible to do a double somersault.’

  ‘It is!’ Samuel shook his head. ‘But I could feel I was off.’ He jumped down from the net, wiping his forehead with his shirt. His flight had changed him; his whole body was looser, less wary.

  ‘You’re Vita,’ he said. ‘Ark said you need something.’

  Vita felt for the red book in her pocket and gripped it tight. She straightened her spine. ‘I need a team,’ she said. And as swiftly as she could, she explained: about the Castle, and the emerald pendant, and the need for money and armies of lawyers to bring Sorrotore to his knees.

  ‘I need to get over a wall, maybe fifteen or twenty feet.’

  ‘Why can’t you just take a ladder?’

  ‘Because the wall rises straight out of a lake. A small one, but still a lake. It needs a rope.’

  ‘A lake?’ said Samuel.

  ‘A real new trick!’ said Arkady. His enthusiasm made his words pile up against one another. ‘We’re going to be thieves!’

  Samuel frowned.

  ‘No, I know what you’re thinking,’ said Arkady hurriedly, ‘but it’s stealing back what was already stolen. Good thieves!’

  ‘Necessary thieves,’ said Vita.

  ‘And it’s out in the countryside,’ said Arkady, ‘way out in nowhere, so we won’t get caught. Probably, anyway.’

  Samuel did not look convinced. ‘Why, though? Why are you doing it?’

  Vita looked up at the trapeze, which still swung back and forth above their heads.

  ‘Because nobody else is going to do it,’ she said
.

  ‘That’s not actually a reason,’ said Samuel. ‘You could say that about almost anything.’

  Vita bit her lip. ‘Mama says we have to be sensible. She wants to make my grandfather come back home to England with us, whether he wants to or not. And Grandpa goes blank if you try to ask him about it. His whole face is like a door slamming shut.’

  Vita closed her eyes, to hide from the thought – and then opened them.

  ‘But if we just pack up and go home, Sorrotore will have won. He’ll win, just like men like him always win. So I don’t want to be sensible.’

  She looked down at her left shoe, at the twist and arch of her foot, at the breakable thinness of her left leg. She thought of all the well-meaning adults, with their sit-down, take-care, not-you-dears. She shook her head, and straightened every bone in her body. ‘Just once, I don’t want to do what I’m told! I want to fight. I’m going to fight.’

  Samuel looked at her for a long, thickly laden moment. ‘My father’s at home in Mashonaland, in Africa,’ he said. ‘He gave everything he had to send me out here, when I was a tiny kid, to tour with my uncle: to join the act. If I don’t, I’m letting down the whole family: cousins, aunts: everyone. But – when I was three, I taught myself to backflip. I loved the way it felt when I landed back up on my feet: like a magic trick. I can’t give it up.’ He stared at his hands, which were covered in chalk. ‘So – I can understand not wanting to do what you’re told.’

  And then he smiled, and the smile rose up to his ears and his disconcerting beauty vanished in favour of glee: the glee of the usually careful turned reckless. ‘Exactly how wide is the wall?’

  ‘I don’t know. Quite wide, I think.’

  ‘And exactly how tall?’

  Vita shook her head. ‘About fifteen feet. Maybe twenty. I don’t know.’

  ‘I need to know exactly. For the rope. Do you have a blueprint?’

  ‘A what?’ said Arkady. ‘I don’t know that word.’

  ‘It’s an architectural plan of a house,’ said Samuel.