The Forest of Souls

by Carla Banks

  The car.

  She hadn’t heard the car drive away.

  And then something cold touched her spine and she was running towards the back of the house, towards the kitchen. She could picture it in her mind. She’d opened the kitchen door to put out the rubbish. She could see herself coming back through the door, distracted by a ringing phone, carelessly pushing it closed with her foot.

  And he was there, the door wide open behind him, standing at the other side of the kitchen table, his face that mask of cold menace she remembered too well. She grabbed at her phone which was lying on the table, but he knocked it away. It skittered across the wooden surface and dropped off. ‘You should keep your fucking doors locked,’ he said.

  Helen had been strangled and her watch had been smashed as a foot had stamped down on it. She could feel her breath coming in uneven gasps. She couldn’t speak. Think. She had to think. She couldn’t get back to the phone in the hall–he was too close. Her mobile. She hadn’t heard it hit the floor. It must have landed on the chair. She began to back away towards the table.

  He looked at her, working his jaw as if to loosen it. ‘You don’t listen, do you? I told you to stay away from my kids.’

  She could feel the edge of the table against her thigh. She moved away from him, putting the table between them, trying not to look down to where her phone had landed. Did he realize that she knew, that she had worked it out? Something caught against the back of her legs, knocking her off balance. The chair. The chair where her phone must have landed. She grabbed the table for support, her hand reaching down. She felt across the seat of the chair. Her fingers brushed against the phone, knocking it sideways. Christ!

  He was moving closer, using his bulk to intimidate her. ‘I told you to keep away from them. You know what it means?’ he said. ‘Did they teach you that at your fancy-pants university?’ He thrust his face towards her. ‘Keep away from my kids!’

  Her fingers closed round the phone.

  ‘Is this the old man’s place? It stinks in here. Is that how you live, people like you? Stink and dirt and mess?’ He was looking at her in contempt.

  She felt across the keypad and was punching in the emergency number as she backed away from him. She could feel the warmth coming off him and smell the sweat of tension. ‘You don’t know what you’re doing! You haven’t got a clue…’

  She held the phone up now that she could hear a voice speaking. ‘Police!’ she said, giving Grandpapa’s address before the operator could connect her. ‘Quickly!’

  His face flushed with rage and he reached towards her, but the table kept him away. She pressed herself further back. ‘Police,’ the phone said in her ear.

  She gave the address again. ‘He’s broken in. Daniel Kovacs. He’s broken in. Please! Hurry!’

  Then she felt the wall against her back. She’d retreated as far as she could, and now she was trapped in the corner. Daniel hesitated, moved towards her, then backed off, suddenly indecisive. He pointed his finger at her. ‘Cunt!’ he said. His voice was low and tight. ‘You stupid cunt! Just stay away from my kids or you’ll be sorry.’

  And then he walked out, not hurrying, apparently unconcerned that the police would be on their way. She stayed frozen in place, then she was across the room to the door, turning the key and pulling the bolts across, trying to control the shaking that was threatening to make her legs collapse. She heard the thump of a van door, the crunch of the gravel, but it was a long time before she could make herself go to the window. When she did, the drive was empty. He’d gone.

  Then she sat down to wait for the police. She’d left it for too long. She had to tell them about Daniel.

  22

  Jake was finding it hard to concentrate. He was trying to get his article finished so he could e-mail it for the deadline, but his mind kept circling around Minsk, Marek Lange, Lange’s illness, Nick Garrick, Sophia Yevanova. He thought about the scene in the hallway of the Yevanov house, Antoni Yevanov’s voice, cold and distant, saying, Whatever that obligation is, you must consider it discharged. I would prefer it if you didn’t visit her again.

  And Jake had left. He’d hated giving in to Yevanov without argument, but he’d had no choice. He knew it was the battle he’d lost, not the war, but it still rankled. He was worried about Miss Yevanova as well. For the first time, he had thought of her as frail–a word that she would hate and that seemed almost obscene in connection with her.

  He read back what he’d written and pressed the ‘delete key’ in frustration. He lit a cigarette and stared blankly at the screen in front of him. He’d had an idea. He picked up his phone and checked the numbers. He didn’t have one for Nick Garrick. He remembered Garrick saying he’d cancelled his contract when he couldn’t pay the bills. He keyed in the number of the Yevanov house, his mind working quickly as he heard the phone ringing.

  He was lucky. Mrs Barker answered so there was no need for subterfuge. ‘It’s Jake Denbigh,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry to call so late…’ It was only eight, but he suspected that the household–Mrs Barker and Miss Yevanova at least–retired early.

  ‘Mr Denbigh.’ Mrs Barker sounded puzzled, but there was no hostility in her voice. Antoni Yevanov must not have said anything to her, or not yet. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘No, not at all. I was a bit worried about Miss Yevanova. How is she?’

  ‘She’s had a bad couple of days,’ Mrs Barker said. ‘She was better this evening.’

  ‘That’s good. Listen, I need to talk to Nicholas Garrick. Is he there?’

  There was a moment’s silence. ‘Nicholas? I believe he’s in his room. Why do you want…?’

  Jake didn’t respond, and when she spoke again, she sounded flustered. ‘Of course. I’ll go and get him.’

  Jake heard the clatter of the phone being put down, and the sound of footsteps. There was a murmur of voices, and then silence.

  ‘Yeah?’ Garrick’s voice took Jake by surprise. There was an echo that told him Garrick was speaking on an extension.

  ‘It’s Jake Denbigh,’ he said.

  ‘Mrs Barker told me. What do you want?’

  Good question, but not one he could answer. He was following his instincts, and something told him that a conversation with Garrick might be useful. Jake didn’t want to talk on an open line. He could picture the phone in the hallway, the receiver lying on the table, and someone–Antoni Yevanov?–standing beside it, watchful and silent.

  ‘There’s something you can help me with–for the book, you know?’

  ‘What–’ Garrick stopped abruptly, apparently struck by the same thought that Jake had. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘When?’

  ‘Tonight. If you’re free.’

  ‘Yeah, right. What would I be doing?’ But Garrick sounded friendlier. He vetoed Jake’s suggestion that he pick him up, and arranged to meet him at the pub close to Jake’s flat. ‘I know it. I’ll be there. Nine, okay?’ He hung up.

  Now that he’d done something, Jake found that he was no longer distracted. He put everything else out of his mind and concentrated on putting the finishing touches to his article. Three-quarters of an hour later, he e-mailed it, then he grabbed his jacket and headed for the door. He knew what he wanted from Garrick now. He wanted an insider’s view of Antoni Yevanov.

  The pub was fairly quiet. He waited at the bar, watching out for Garrick. It was ten past the hour before he arrived, standing in the doorway and looking round cautiously as if he wasn’t sure that he should be there. He saw Jake and came over. ‘Drink?’ Jake said.

  Garrick shook his head. ‘I’ll get my own.’ Then, as if aware this sounded a bit abrupt, he added, ‘I can’t afford to buy rounds.’

  ‘Okay.’ Jake stood back and waited as Nick ordered a bottle of lager. The girl who was serving behind the bar was pretty, wearing a tight T-shirt and low-cut jeans. Jake could see the flash of the ring piercing her navel. She seemed interested in Garrick, throwing a comment at him, laughing, prolonging the transaction to see if he
wanted to chat, but Garrick was oblivious, digging his cash out of his pocket, nodding vaguely to something she said as he counted it out. She shrugged and went to the till.

  ‘Okay,’ Garrick said, once they’d found a table. ‘What did you want to ask me?’

  ‘You know that I’m writing a book about the war, about Sophia Yevanova’s story, right?’ He checked Garrick with a quick glance. Garrick nodded. ‘I need to know a bit more about Antoni Yevanov.’ Jake wasn’t sure what he’d done to antagonize the man, but the hostility between them had been instant and mutual. Know your enemy seemed to be a good starting point. ‘I know about his work, I know about his political stuff, but that’s all I know. He keeps everything else under wraps.’

  Garrick looked confused, as if he hadn’t expected Jake to ask this. ‘I thought…Don’t you want to ask me about the library? About what happened?’

  Jake shrugged. ‘It’s nothing to do with me.’

  ‘I thought you were doing a story–you know, evil father, killer son. I thought that was why you were asking all those questions.’

  Journalists and sewer rats occupied the same ecological niche in a lot of people’s minds, Jake knew that, but Garrick’s quick assumption still annoyed him. ‘You were a news item for a couple of days. It’s over–as far as you’re concerned. They’ve moved on.’

  Garrick’s first response was anger. ‘If you’d had all the…’ He stopped abruptly and picked up his drink. ‘Right. Sorry. Sometimes I forget he isn’t around any more.’ He ran his hand over his face. ‘I don’t know about Yevanov. I don’t think I can tell you anything you don’t know. He didn’t visit much when I was there.’

  ‘What about now? Why did he come here?’ The Manchester appointment might be prestigious within the academic world, but Yevanov operated on a wider stage.

  ‘I don’t know. When I came out of hospital after the accident, he’d come back. Miss Yevanova’s been a lot sicker this past year or so–he said he wanted to look after her.’

  Altruism. Sophia Yevanova was close to her son. The only thing of value…Maybe that closeness was reciprocated, or enough to bring Yevanov to Manchester for the few years his mother had left, but Jake wasn’t convinced.

  He remembered the rumours about Yevanov and Helen Kovacs. Could it have been this woman who had brought Yevanov to a place on the outer edges of the European Union? But he couldn’t picture Yevanov acting under the impulse of his emotions. And anyway, a mother of two, struggling at the beginnings of her career seemed an unlikely candidate. What would she have had to attract a man like Yevanov? He had seen photographs of Yevanov’s ex-wife, a French diplomat who was startlingly talented and startlingly beautiful. The marriage had ended in divorce about five years ago. Maybe the clash of egos had been too much. ‘Did you ever meet his wife?’

  ‘She wouldn’t have come here.’

  So much for inside information. Jake felt frustrated. He knew that Garrick could tell him stuff he wanted to know, but pushing the questions tonight would just make him hostile and suspicious. He leaned back in his chair and offered Garrick a cigarette.

  Garrick shook his head. ‘Those things’ll kill you, man.’

  Jake grinned. ‘I’m holding out for the jealous husband on my eightieth birthday.’

  Garrick’s face twitched in a quick, reluctant smile. He was nursing the bottle of lager he’d bought, lifting it to his mouth and putting it down undrunk.

  ‘Look, let me get you another. Call it payment for information.’

  Garrick hesitated, then nodded. ‘Okay.’

  When Jake came back from the bar, Garrick nodded his thanks, but didn’t say anything. Jake sat back and let the silence develop. After a while, Garrick spoke suddenly, as if what he had been thinking about had burst to the surface. ‘I don’t know what to do next. I can’t stay there. And I’ve got to go back to uni in September.’

  Jake had forgotten that Garrick was halfway through a degree. ‘What subject?’

  ‘Politics.’ He didn’t sound enthusiastic.

  It seemed an unlikely subject for Garrick. Jake would have expected something more physical, something practical–engineering, sports studies, something like that. ‘Why?’

  ‘I always thought about going into politics. I thought, if I was there, I could do something about people like my father. Miss Yevanova thought it was a good idea.’

  Jake couldn’t imagine a less likely contender for the political world than Nick Garrick. ‘Seriously? Is that what you want to do?’

  ‘I thought I did, but…It’s all stuff written by dead people and it’s not much about doing anything. I mean, like you’re Joe Blow for Scumborough East, and you sit in Parliament for fifty years and then you die. Who cares?’

  Jake was amused by this quick–and to a certain extent accurate–summing up of parliamentary democracy. ‘So what are you going to do?’

  Garrick frowned. ‘I don’t know. I’ve got to finish the course.’

  ‘Why? You don’t have to. Switch courses, if that’s not what you want to do.’

  ‘I just…’ Garrick fiddled with a beer mat, then looked at Jake. ‘I want people to know. I want to stand up somewhere where they’ll listen, and say “I am not my father.”’

  Jake could remember the egotism of his early twenties when he knew that the whole world was waiting in breathless anticipation to see what Jake Denbigh was going to do next, and he remembered the slow and painful dawning of the truth. ‘You know something?’ he said. ‘No one cares.’

  Garrick looked at him blankly. ‘I care.’

  ‘So stand in front of the bathroom mirror and say it.’

  ‘Yevanov cares. And my father did. He never knew what I thought, not really.’

  Jake suppressed his exasperation. He could understand Garrick’s predicament. He’d grown up with a cold and didactic father and a loving, but rather ineffectual, mother. His opinions had been formed more from rebellion than conviction. ‘Yevanov doesn’t give a toss. He just doesn’t like you. It happens. And your father’s dead.’

  Garrick’s face flushed. ‘So I just…get on with it? Pretend it never happened?’

  He would be angry with his father for the rest of his life. With reason. And there was probably a lot of anger towards his mother that he wasn’t prepared to admit. Jake told himself to stop playing amateur psychiatrist. ‘All I’m saying is, don’t let all of that push you into something you don’t want to do.’

  Garrick was carefully peeling the beer mat in two. ‘Thing is, I don’t know what I do want to do.’

  ‘You’re–what?–twenty-two? Why do you have to make a decision now? There’s a whole world out there. Take a year out. Give yourself a bit of time to think.’

  Garrick looked thoughtful. ‘I’ve never really been anywhere. I could get some cash together…I want to walk the Appalachian trail.’ He crushed the beer mat and dropped it in the ashtray. ‘You can do it in six months, easy. I could…’ He looked into the distance, calculating.

  For the rest of the evening, Jake let Garrick lead the talk. He listened to accounts of walking coastal paths, of the Pennine Way, of walks that Garrick had never done but heard about, of the particular demands of the challenging route up the spine of the USA.

  It was almost ten thirty when they left the pub. The sky was clear. ‘They say…’ Garrick was looking up at the sky ‘…that out in the wilds, the stars…You never see them here, not even in the countryside. There’s too much light. They say that the universe is expanding and everything is moving apart so fast that, in the end, there’ll be no light from the stars at all. We’ll just be on our own.’

  Jake looked up at the night sky. There was something chilling about the prospect.

  ‘You live near here, don’t you?’ Garrick said.

  ‘Over there.’ Jake indicated the apartment block.

  ‘I don’t know how you stand it. I can’t stand being closed in. I want to live somewhere open–where you can go for miles and not see a building or a road or
anything.’

  Jake grinned. ‘You’d make a lousy politician then.’

  ‘Right. Dead right. Look, thanks for the advice. I’m sorry if I thought…I got you wrong. Thanks.’

  Jake watched as Garrick walked away towards the main road. He wondered if anything would come of their talk. He remembered, uneasily, a saying he’d heard about advice. If you gave someone advice and they took it, you were then responsible for the outcome. He shrugged the feeling off and walked back to his flat, the cobbles uneven under his feet. He found his mind going back to the things he’d been thinking about earlier, to Minsk, to Marek Lange, to Faith…

  After the police had left, Faith went round the house obsessively checking the windows and doors. She no longer felt safe. She thought about going home, but she would have felt no safer there. Daniel knew how to find her and the two officers who had answered her call had not reassured her.

  They’d seemed professional enough, but their questions had been oddly off-key, their responses more designed to sooth than to promise any action. ‘So he didn’t break in?’ the older one said.

  ‘Only because I’d forgotten to lock the back door.’ They seemed to think this was important, and she couldn’t get the violence of Daniel’s entry into the house across to them.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’ll have a word. He won’t bother you again.’ His avuncular manner grated on her nerves.

  They promised to pass on what she had told them about Daniel’s alibi the night of Helen’s death, but she didn’t feel reassured. She found herself jumping at every noise, lying awake through the night, listening intently as the old house creaked and settled around her.

  Next morning, she felt better. Sleep had given her perspective. She had reported Daniel’s behaviour, she had passed on her suspicions to the police. It was no longer her responsibility, and if the men who’d called round in the night hadn’t seen the importance of what she’d told them, the people investigating Helen’s death would. She felt lighter, as if she had been carrying something heavy, and now at last she was able to put it down.