Feeling hungry, confused, and ready to kill anyone who complained about their noise, Eva stood alone in the library while Pavel disappeared into another room. She stared at the old cloth book spines and wondered if it was time to run. But she remembered Pavel’s strangeness at the airport. Now he had just cost her two hundred pounds. She really wanted to go but she had too much invested to give up. A moment later, Pavel returned clutching two little leather bound books, one red and one green, with gilt lettering on the spines.
“You haven’t even picked a book!” said Pavel, sounding disappointed.
Eva folded her arms. Pavel smiled. “Then here, read this. I won’t be long now. Don’t you just love this place?”
Eva accepted the red book in her hands and spun it around. “Poems of Purest Beauty by Poets of the Ages.” said the cover.
“It is an exquisite book. Almost as exquisite as you...”
Eva opened her mouth to protest, but Pavel put a finger to his lips.
“Enjoy and then we must have lunch,” he said, and walked away to a tall leather armchair overlooking the street below. She watched him look out over the bright Whitechapel street. He turned the chair so he could see out the window. Eva watched him the whole time and went through the motions of opening the book of poems. She couldn’t abide poetry. But Pavel was increasingly intriguing. And at the very same time, his behaviour was beginning to seriously unnerve her.
After a while he looked up at her. Eva was watching.
“What are you reading?” she asked
“Oh, nothing really. Just one of my current inspirations.”
He lifted the book title to show her. “The Philosophy of the New and the Free: a treatise on the highest freedom attainable to men of faith and reason.” The title was enough to ensure Eva would never want to read it.
“We are free when we choose to be so, Eva. Free to become who we truly are. I’m free, Eva. Free to be precisely who I am. Free to serve a greater cause and free to love whoever I wish... Tell me. Are you that free, Eva?” said Pavel, with a whisper.
“I’m just as free as I need to be,” said Eva.
“I don’t think you are,” said Pavel. “One day soon, mark my words, you will want to read this. By then you will be free... I promise you.”
Eva wanted to shake him out of his spell. Any thoughts of kissing him had long since gone.
“You’re talking riddles. And you didn’t look very free this morning at the airport.”
Pavel’s smile faded. “Do you always try to read people this way?”
“It’s my job, Pavel.”
“Then maybe your job has changed you.”
“Life has changed me, Pavel. Maybe it has changed you too.”
The man stroked his beard between his finger and thumb. His eyes glazed. “Maybe... I am sorry this has been a bore for you,” said Pavel. He stood up and slid the little book into his jacket pocket. The leather cover stuck out at an angle. He walked away. Eva assumed he was going to the toilet. His jacket grazed a bookshelf and the little book tumbled to the floor. Pavel seemed oblivious. He walked out of the room and kept going. Quickly, Eva picked up the little book and walked to the window and to check on Pavel’s view of Whitechapel below. There was nothing to be gleaned from looking at the hustle and bustle. Then Eva opened the book, flicking the pages without a care for its age, searching for something to reveal what was going on.
“...freedom is available at every turn once man overthrows the tyranny... freedom can be lived if it is seized with determination, and if necessary, violence. Freedom is a right, and once that right is realised, man has an obligation to live in no other way. To seize it. To act upon it. To make every moment an act of creation or destruction as he wills, the free man can do no wrong according to the highest urges within...”
It was abstract gobbledygook. The ramblings of a man caught between high philosophy and more than a hint of madness. But the following pages caught her attention most of all. The pages parted easily from plenty of use. And on the margins were pencil squiggles, and places where an eraser had wiped out other pencil lines and ancient dirt before them. The squiggles were almost familiar. Like shorthand, or a code. Eva’s heart jumped. She thought of Pavel’s reactions to the police at Stansted Airport. His strained manner. Surely, not...
Eva walked across the room and placed the book exactly where Pavel dropped it. She picked her mobile phone from her bag and called Dan as quickly as she could. She paced around the window, listening to the ring tone.
“Dan. It’s me.”
“How’s it going?”
“I’m worried something is wrong with Pavel.”
“Like what?”
“It’s too much to say over the phone. I’m in Whitechapel. I think you should come to London, Dan. I might need you.”
“Is he scaring you? If he’s scaring you, I’ll...”
Eva heard a creak behind her and jumped. She kept her eyes on the bright window and put a smile on her face to mask any trace of conspiracy from her voice.
“No, that’s fine, Mr Merton. Don’t worry. I’ll call you tomorrow. We can book an appointment for next week, okay? Thanks for your call now. Goodbye.”
Eva turned and saw Pavel lingering halfway across the room. His eyes were distant. There was less affection in them now.
“Is something wrong?” said Pavel.
“No? Why? Should there be?”
“No. Nothing should be wrong.”
Pavel bent down, picked up his book and turned it over in his hands. He opened it and looked inside then looked at Eva.
“I dropped this. Did you look at it?”
“Oh. Your book. Sorry, I didn’t notice. No, I didn’t look at it.”
Pavel smiled. “Like I said, you will one day. Come on...” Pavel held the door open and waited for her to leave ahead of him. “Let’s get some lunch.”
Eva let the smile drop from her face as soon as she had past him. Dan was more than an hour away , depending where they went next. Maybe they would soon be laughing about this. Maybe Eva was just being paranoid. Then again, maybe not. Dan was going to be a while. Eva had to keep things good until then.
Five
Pavel walked her to a Tandoori restaurant with dark tinted windows. Eva had imagined the restaurant was a pre-picked venue until she saw how reluctantly the little waiter served them. The little pencil squiggles in the philosophy book had made her imagination run riot. Pavel ordered her a white wine without asking if she wanted one. Eva gently pushed the glass away.
“What is it?” said Pavel.
“You’re drinking all this water, and buying me glasses of wine. I don’t like to drink alone. Well... not always.”
“Don’t you let your hair down at all, Eva?”
“Of course. But today has been...”
She hesitated.
“Different to what I expected.”
“Ah. There may be a reason for that.”
“Tell me...”
“I’m old before my time, Eva. I think too much. I was always a thinker, but these days I believe I must act on my thoughts as well as think them. Does that sound mad?”
“It sounds... risky.”
“Really? Life is a risk. I certainly couldn’t be happy and keep all of these ideas inside.”
“What ideas?” said Eva, leaning forward, but she heard the harsh, inquiring tone in her own voice, and watched Pavel retreat in his chair.
“Just ideas, that’s all. But I’ll share one with you, if you like.”
Eva nodded. She swallowed as a shrill tension took control of her in anticipation.
“Okay. Promise you won’t hate me.”
Eva smirked, pretending the idea of hating Pavel was ridiculous.
“If it wasn’t for our... family connections, Eva. Do you think our kiss could have become anything more...?”
Eva’s face flushed. She toyed with the edge of her napkin and sat back before looking Pavel in the eye. “We were seventeen, Pavel
. We made a mistake. I didn’t think we would ever revisit those things again. Not ever.”
“You buried the kiss. So did I for a time. But I remembered it too fondly. The more I smothered it, the more it appeared. Especially in recent years...”
“I think if we had gone beyond a kiss we would have lived a life filled with regret.”
Pavel drew back in his chair in silence. “But maybe there is already regret. You have become conservative, Eva. You were an idealist back then, like me. Your answer fifteen years ago might have been quite different.”
“I was a girl, Pavel. Can we not leave it there...?”
“Maybe you can. But listen. I showed you that book. It’s ingrained in me, Eva. I must be who I am.”
Eva shook her head. “Is this what you are here for, Pavel. To dig up the past?”
“To be true to myself and to experience freedom.”
“Pavel?”
“Eva, I have never loved anyone since you.”
Eva coughed and took a sip of her wine. The man’s big eyes flickered. He watched her drink and waited. “Pavel... that’s ridiculous. We were children!”
“No. We were young adults. I can see you don’t want to hear this... I see that now. But Eva... I have a duty to live the right way.”
“You do know about Dan?”
He nodded.
“Then how could you do this to me?”
“Because of what I told you. What I already showed you in the library. I am going to create history, Eva. What is the point of hiding the truth in such circumstances?”
“You’re living your life by a book? Something happened. Now tell me, what happened to you?”
The little waiter brought them starters of sizzling fried prawns on black platters. A phone vibrated somewhere, and Eva hoped it was hers, but she saw her cousin reach into his pocket and read a text from the screen of his smartphone.
“I must make a call. Please start without me.”
Pavel walked away from the table and headed for the toilets. Eva looked at the sizzling prawns without any appetite. She shook her head, furious, ready to walk out. There across the table, sticking out from his coat pocket, she saw the little red leather book. Eva looked at the waiter. The little man was stacking glasses at the bar, his back turned. Eva moved. She stood up and grabbed her jacket. As deftly as she could, she leaned across Pavel’s coat and snatched the little book from his pocket and then turned to the front door. Her temples were tight and her body rigid, fearful of being caught before she could get out. But she made it. She walked out into the bright spring sun, and blended into the crowded streets by Whitechapel market. And she kept going. She felt relieved with each passing second. Then the seconds ran out.
“Eva! Where are you going!” called Pavel. She turned and saw how far she’d managed to get. She was only a few shop fronts away from the restaurant. Finally, Eva gave in. She turned away and ran, and she heard him call after her as he started to give pursuit.
Six
Eva reached the throng outside Whitechapel station and stopped for a second. She had options but time was not on her side. The area was packed with people streaming in and out of the station. Her car was parked nearby. Pavel would definitely head for her car if he couldn’t find her soon, so the Alfa Romeo was definitely off the agenda. All she wanted was time enough to think, and to look inside his mysterious little book. Pavel was sick in the head. He’d become obsessed... after this she would never see him again.
“Eva!” she heard her name called somewhere in the distance and knew that he was coming. It was time for a diversion. Pavel was tall enough to see over most crowds, so, Eva ran towards the tube station, and then stopped just short of the entrance. Instead of going inside, she pressed close along to the wall and walked along by the shops and takeaway windows. She did not dare look back. Eva moved on for another few minutes, until she came to a broad set of windows full of TV screens, washing machines and sound systems. There was a walkway set deep into the windows – an old fashioned shop. Eva took a moment’s respite in the walkway and looked out to the sunny street and saw tall Pavel pace past without seeing her. Eva turned and walked inside the shop. The door chimed and she saw a young sales assistant look up.
“Just browsing,” said Eva, to keep him away. The young man nodded. Eva walked to the back of the shop where she would be most hidden from the street. She pretended to look at the TVs while she fiddled with her smartphone. First she typed in her cousin’s name into a search engine, then added more search terms: Prague university English department. A string of click-through options came up. Most of them were no good. A few were entirely in Czech. She clicked on one of these while hiding near the oversize TV screens. A Czech newspaper article appeared with a photograph of her cousin looking serious and aloof. At the top of the screen was a ‘translate’ button. Eva clicked it, and a second later the text turned into English. The headline said enough.
“Disgraced Professor Resigns from University”
Eva scanned the article. It said Pavel had been an English teacher. A good one. But then he started to turn his lectures into arguments where no learning took place. Later Pavel had resorted to threatening students who didn’t like his views. The threats were made to young women as much as men. On grounds of diminished mental health, Pavel was not sent to prison. But he did lose his position. And the article didn’t say what his punishment or treatment was. The article was two years old. Only one person had stuck up for her cousin. One of his colleagues, a professor called George Ballelli.
“Can I help you?”
Eva looked up and saw the young sales assistant standing in front of her. His hands were clasped together as if in prayer. The name badge on his blue shirt said” Jeff.”
Eva was just about to say “No, I’m just browsing,” when her eyes chanced upon the forty-inch screen behind the young sales assistant. The screen showed one of the now infamous images from Lille. A blurred image of a young man wearing a scarf over his face and a backpack on his back, heading into Lille train station. Everyone knew the image was taken twenty minutes before the bomb exploded. There were four images of the masked man divided across the screen. The one in the top right corner had Eva transfixed. Right behind the masked man, a tall man walked with a briefcase. The image was blurred, but the shadows on the man’s face implied a beard and large eyes. Eva’s mouth fell open. Her heart started to pound. There could be doubt. Pavel had been in Lille twenty minutes before the train station exploded, captured in the same shot with the infamous man in black. His presence looked almost incidental. But Eva had learned long ago there was no such thing as coincidence. Eva left the sales assistant hanging and called Dan just as fast as she could.
Continued in Flesh & Blood part two:
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Dear Reader,
I hope you enjoyed the first part of this thrilling adventure. I would be very grateful if you would leave a review with the retailer where you bought it. Every review really does matter! If you have enjoyed the story you may like to know there is a whole 13 book series of Eva and Dan thrillers called ‘Long Time Dying,’ and the first three books are available FREE. I would also love for you to join me at the Solomon Carter facebook page More free stories, exclusive news, early bird discounts and other great stuff is available when you join the Readers’ Group at SolomonCarter.net. I’d love to have you with us.
All the very best,
Solomon
FLESH AND BLOOD – Roberts & Bradley Casebook series
First published in Great Britain in 2016 by Great Leap
Copyright © Solomon Carter 2016
Solomon Carter has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.
This book is a work of fiction and except in the case of historical fact, any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this e-book publication may be re
produced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review, without the prior written permission of the author.
Flesh and Blood--A gripping private detective mystery thriller Page 2
