Thirty-nine
Tasha Evanoff
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n-2lPzH7Do
Anak
I put the rope ladder away and go into the kitchen. Baba is sitting in front of her customary pot of tea. Her face is pale and sadder than I have ever seen it.
‘Is he … gone?’
I nod.
She closes her eyes and swallows violently as she tries to regain control of her emotions.
I kneel beside her and cover her clenched fist with my hand. Even though I’m the one who was out in the cold all night, her hands are freezing.
She opens her eyes and nods. ‘You did well, my child. You did well.’ Her voice breaks on the last word and I throw my arms around her neck.
‘It wasn’t me. I was too cowardly. I couldn’t pull the trigger.’
A ghost of a smile appears on her lips. ‘I’m glad it wasn’t you. A child shouldn’t have to kill her own father, even if he is a monster.’
‘Noah did it.’
‘So he made it there. How is he?’
‘He’s wounded, but he’s alive.’
‘Where is he now?’
‘I don’t know the full details, but it’s some kind of safe house run by Irish gypsies.’
She nods distractedly. ‘Where is your father now?’
‘They’ve taken his body away.’
Her lips press down so hard they are a thin straight line. ‘To be disposed of how?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t ask, but it has to be in such a way that it is never found.’ I don’t tell her about the pig farm and greedy pigs.
She looks down at the floor. ‘Did he … suffer?’
‘No. It was instant. One bullet.’
‘Was he angry with me?’
I stroke her hair. ‘He died not knowing you helped me.’
A great sob racks her body. It comes from her very core and makes her hands tremble so uncontrollably I become scared.
‘Oh, Baba,’ I cry helplessly. ‘Don’t cry so hard. Please. You’ll become ill.’
She makes a great effort to calm herself, but tears flow down her cheek ceaselessly.
‘I’m sorry, Baba. I made you choose between him and me.’
‘You didn’t, my child. I made that choice myself.’
‘I wish there could have been another way.’
‘There wasn’t. Don’t you think if there was I wouldn’t have taken it? He was my son, my flesh and blood. I carried him in my belly for nine months. Nine months. I never told you that when he was born he was small and sickly, always crying with colic. He would cry for hours and his father would get so annoyed, sometimes I’d wrap him up tightly and take him out to the garden in the middle of the night. I’d sit for hours in the cold just rocking him until he was so exhausted with crying he fell asleep.’
She sniffs.
‘Then I’d try to get up and find my legs were so cold they wouldn’t work. When he was four he got inflammation of the cornea and the doctor said he could become blind. I took him to the church every day. I fell on my knees and prayed for him to be able to see again. When he was older and he went into this life, I got on my knees again to beg forgiveness for the terrible things he was doing. I asked that his heart be shown the path to repentance. Most of my life I’ve been praying for him, but I never felt any of it was a sacrifice. I loved him so much. He was my life, my heart, my soul.’
‘I’m so sorry, Baba.’
She smiles sadly. ‘Once when he was only a boy and he was being naughty I told him, “Do you know I carried you in my belly for nine months and this is how you repay me?” You know what he said?’
I shake my head.
‘He said, “Tell me how much rent you want for those nine months and I’ll pay it. This way I won’t have to listen to you going on about how you carried me in your stomach for the rest of my life.” He was only seven-and-a-half years old then, but I should have known that day. A child who shows no gratitude is not going to turn out well.’
I look at her sadly. It is impossible to comfort her. Her love is deeper than I realized.
‘What will happen now?’ she asks.
‘I will lodge a police report that Papa is missing. We will all, including Mama, help the investigators with all their queries, but as none of us know anything we won’t be able to help much.’
‘What about this house and the servants?’ she asks.
‘Of course we will continue to live in this house for a while. Then, I will move out and go to live with Noah, and after a couple of months you will come to live with me. I don’t want any of Papa’s wealth so I won’t be declaring him dead. Let the lawyers sort it out in time. Have you eaten, Baba?’ I ask.
‘No. I’m not hungry.’
‘I heard you being sick in the bathroom when you went up to your room.’
‘Yes,’ she admits. ‘I threw up everything I ate last night.’
‘I’m going to make some dried mushroom and barley soup and you’re going to try to eat some, alright?’
She nods.
‘I’ll be back.’
First I take the battery out of my mobile phone. I’ll throw the pieces away later. Then I go into the larder to find the ingredients. As I start to prepare the soup Baba comes to me and helps me.
I smile at her as we cook together, filling the kitchen with warm smells from Baba’s past.
Forty
Tasha Evanoff
After I have fed Baba and helped her back to her room, I square my shoulders and go to my father’s room. It is big and strangely still. The shutters are closed and it is dark. For a moment, I stand at the doorway and feel a sensation of remorse. I took a man’s life. Even if I did not pull the trigger, it was I who orchestrated him into that position, and would have eventually completed the execution I was a hair’s breadth away.
My father was right. I will never be the same again.
Then I shake off the dark sense of disquiet and switch on the light.
His bed is crumpled and clearly shows the marks of his body being pulled out of it. I have to be out of here before the servants start arriving. I pull on my rubber gloves, walk to the bed, and rearrange it so it looks the way it would if someone got out of it naturally.
Then I collect his wallet, his belt, his money clip and his shoes, and put them all into a laundry bag. I take one last look then I switch off the light and go to my own room. I add my clothes and shoes to my father’s things and lock the laundry bag in my safe. I will burn everything later.
Then I go into the shower.
While I am standing under the strong cascade of warm water, I have a strange sensation. As if what is happening to me can’t be real. My father is dead. Sergei is dead. Noah told me he loves me. My grandmother is completely devastated. Noah is alive. I’m a murderer.
After my shower I go downstairs to the kitchen.
‘Where’s Rosita?’ I ask the chef.
‘I think she’s in the laundry room,’ he says.
I run down to the basement and find her folding some sheets.
She smiles broadly. ‘You’re up early.’
‘No, I’m not,’ I deny guiltily, then I stop myself. ‘Yeah, I drank a lot last night and slept like a log. I woke up with a headache, but thank God it’s gone now that I’ve had a shower.’
Rosita smiles politely while she waits to hear what I want from her.
‘Hey, you know the puppy I gave you the other day, where is it now?’
Her smile suddenly widens to a big, toothy grin.
‘Come, come. It is good that you have come to take him. He’s very naughty. Impossible to work when he is around,’ she says, and takes me to the corridor.
Just outside the cellar door is a cage with the poor puppy inside it. He is sitting upright and staring at us curiously. I open the cage door and take him into my arms. He is ecstatic to be free and licks my face with his tiny little tongue.
‘I’m so sorry. It’s not your fault at all. You’re a
good little boy,’ I say, kissing his soft ears.
Then I take him with me upstairs to Baba’s room.
He’ll never take Sergei’s place, but he deserves better than being locked up in a cage in the basement. One day I’ll learn to love him.
I put him on the floor in Baba’s room. He starts running around like a mad thing. Just like Sergei used to.
I look at Baba. ‘If you don’t mind, I’m going to call him Niki. He will be Papa’s gift to us. He will be one of the good things that Papa gave to me.’
I wait until 2.00pm when it has become certain among the servants and everybody in the household that Papa is missing. Something is wrong. Then I call Oliver. He doesn’t pick up and I am about to leave a message when he comes on.
‘Hello, Tasha,’ he says. How I could have thought I could marry him or live with him seems incredible now. I must have been a different person. Not truly living at all.
‘Oliver, I’m calling to give you the bad news that my father is missing.’
‘What do you mean missing?’
‘He left in his car in the middle of the night and now neither he nor his car can be found.’
‘Are you joking?’
‘Of course not,’ I say coldly.
‘Sorry,’ he apologizes, taken aback by my coldness. ‘It just seems so incredible.’
‘Anyway, the reason I’m calling is to tell you under the circumstances there won’t be a wedding.’
‘Not so fast. Your father and I had a deal.’
‘Yes, I know. You’ll have to take it up with him when he shows up. Goodbye.’
‘Hang on a minu—’
I end the call. ‘That’s that,’ I say, and a smile comes to my lips.
My phone rings. It is him. I reject the call and block his number.
It is time to go to the police. I buy a new pay as you go, throw my old cell phone in a bin on Park Lane and the battery in a bin outside the police station just before I go in to make a missing person report.
That night I sleep in Baba’s room with Niki.
Forty-one
Jake Eden
You could have knocked me down with a feather when my brother Shane called while on holiday in Guyana. He told me he needed a safe house for a man hiding from the Russian Mafia.
‘You better not be fucking involved with the Russian Mob,’ was my first reaction.
He assured me he was not.
My next question was, ‘How the fuck do you know anyone who needs a safe house?’
‘It’s a long story,’ he says. He doesn’t want to say it on the phone. Long story short, he owed a favor to Zane, the Russian mobster who became Alexander Malenkov, the world famous pianist. I had no idea Shane even knew Zane. Sometimes Shane surprises me. All my life I always treated him as a kid. The playboy of the family, but when the chips are down he always surprises me.
The man’s name is Noah Abramovich and, by the way, he’s injured. So I arranged for him to be collected from this doctor’s apartment and transferred to the safe house. This afternoon I’m supposed to pick up Tasha Evanoff and take her to him. I know her father rather well, actually. Corrupt as hell. His legitimate companies are a front for his shady businesses.
Tasha Evanoff and I agree to meet at Starbucks in Knightsbridge. I arrive five minutes before our appointed time, but she is already here. I recognize her straightaway. Butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-her-mouth, a blue-eyed blonde Russian beauty with an inner core of pure steel.
She’s the opposite of my wife. My Lily looks tough on the outside, but she’s delicate inside. Sometimes when I look at her, I feel a twinge of worry. I’ll stand at the window watching her feeding her birds and she seems so far away, so unreachable that it makes me want to run down the stairs, grab her tight and fuck her so I’m inside her, I’m part of her.
So that there’s nothing else in her head and mind except me. It makes me fiercely protective. Ever since we got together I haven’t left her alone for a single night. I take her everywhere with me. If she can’t come, I don’t go. I don’t trust anyone else with her. No. Better safe than sorry.
‘Tasha Evanoff?’
‘Hello, Mr. Eden. Thank you for taking me to see him.’ Her accent is pure upper-class, the best that money can buy. She stands, even though the finishing schools she must have attended would have told her it was not necessary, and extends her hand. She is dressed in an expensively understated and very conservative blue top and skirt, but there’re a lot of secrets going on behind those wary eyes.
I take her hand. She has never done a day’s work in her life. ‘Jake Eden. No need to thank me. It’s a pleasure,’ I say.
She bites her bottom lip. ‘Is he alright?’
‘Other than suffering from a broken heart, yeah.’
She smiles.
‘That’s better.’ I look down at the table. She has nearly finished her latte.
‘Would you like something to drink?’ she asks.
‘Actually, no. I’m parked on double yellow lines.’
She picks up her purse and follows me out. There is no ticket on the windscreen. I open the passenger door and help her get in. She picks a toy from between her feet.
‘You have children?’
I smile. ‘Three.’
‘That’s nice.’
‘Yes, it is.’
I start the engine and my phone rings. ‘That’s my oldest one, Liliana, calling now.’ I put her on speaker and edge into traffic.
‘Daddy. You won’t believe what Tommy has done,’ she says furiously.
‘What has he done?’
‘He’s put a bucket of sand down my toilet and now it’s stuck.’
‘What did you do to him first?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Are you sure about that?’
‘Well, he started it.’
Tasha giggles.
‘Who’s that with you?’ she asks instantly.
‘You don’t know her,’ I say.
‘How do you know? I might,’ she says impertinently.
Tasha laughs again.
‘Does mummy know her?’
‘No, mummy doesn’t know her.’
‘Does she go to my school?’
‘Liliana, you don’t know her. Now can we get back to your problem with Tommy?’
‘But how do you know I don’t know her? I know lots of people. You should let me talk to her, Daddy,’ she says confidently in that adult voice that freaks most people out.
By now Tasha can’t stop giggling.
I look at Tasha. ‘Do you want to speak to my daughter?’
As I get on the M25 my daughter is busy thoroughly interrogating the daughter of one of London’s hidden Russian Mafia bosses. Fifteen minutes later and the conversation is still going strong.
‘You should come to our house,’ my daughter says. ‘You’ll like it here. We have a big dog, and a small cat, many fishes, two naughty hamsters and lots of birds. You can stay in the guest room. Do you want to come?’
‘Well, thank you. Maybe I’ll come around one day.’
‘Come this Friday,’ Liliana invites.
‘Er … maybe not this Friday,’ Tasha says.
‘What about Saturday?’ my daughter insists.
‘Liliana. How many times must I tell you not to force people to do things they don’t want to?’
‘I’m not forcing Tasha. She said she wanted to come.’
‘Anyway,’ I say. ‘Tasha has to go now. Say goodbye.’
‘Bye, Tasha. Daddy, about Tommy …’
‘Liliana, I’m just about to arrive. Can we discuss this a bit later?’
‘Oh, all right,’ she huffs.
‘Good girl.’
‘Love you,’ she says.
‘See you later.’
‘Say it back,’ she demands.
‘I love you, pumpkin.’
‘Bye, Daddy,’ she sings happily before the line goes dead.
‘What an awesome kid,’ Tasha says wishfully.
‘Try living with that 24 seven,’ I say, but in actual fact, I burst with pride when I think of her.
‘I’d love a kid like that,’ Tasha says. ‘She’s so intelligent and so alive.’
I smile. ‘Yes, she is that.’
I turn off at the Chertsey turning and after a few roads we turn into a dirt lane with fields on either side of the road. Suddenly a man appears as if out of nowhere on the road. He doesn’t move. Other men appear. They surround the car. I feel the energy in the car change. Their fierce, unkempt appearance and their unsmiling faces make Tasha nervous.
‘Who are these people?’ she asks.
‘They’re my people. Irish gypsies.’
She turns towards me. Her eyes are full of fear. ‘You trust them?’
I look her in the eye. ‘With my life.’
She exhales and I feel the tension drain out of her body.
I wind down the window.
One of the men lays his boxer’s arm on the top of the car and leans in. He smells of bacon and beer. ‘How’s it going, Craig?’ I ask.
His sparkling blue eyes crinkle at the corners. ‘Mornin’ to ya, Jake, m’boy. No news is good news.’
Forty-two
Tasha Evanoff
After Jake and the man exchanged a few words in a dialect so thick I barely could make out what they were saying, the crowd of intimidating, dirty, staring people, who I assumed must be the inhabitants of the caravans in the fields on either side of us, part to allow the car through.
The car comes to a stop in front of a plain bungalow with a red roof. Noah is sitting outside smoking a cigarette. To my great relief he looks well. When he sees the car he flicks away his cigarette and comes up to us as we get out.
‘I’ll be having a beer with the boys, but I’ll be back to pick her up in an hour,’ Jake says as he closes his door.
‘Thanks,’ Noah says.
‘No problem,’ he throws over his shoulder, his long, muscular legs already walking away.
I stand there, my chin slightly dipped, looking at Noah. In the cold light of the day I feel suddenly shy. A weak autumn sun struggles out from under grey clouds and shines down on us. He crooks his finger at me.
You Don't Know Me: A Bad Boy Mafia Romance Page 16
