Nukes somebody said, radioactive poison. Like the Russian guy.
Polonium, right? Didn’t they say it jumps out of a box and climbs the walls?
Anger and fear ran through the little crowd for a few seconds, then fatigue set into their voices.
What can you do? What’s there to do?
Most sounded weary but a crude rough English voice suddenly shrieked louder than the others. “They’ll fucking get us!” the man said and the fear turned to hate, and I wanted out. The crowd was beginning to get ugly. I beat it, rain soaking through my clothes.
The address I was looking for was three blocks away. In the window was a handwritten card announcing a room for rent. I leaned on the bell, a woman appeared, I said I had found some mail, return address in Wimbledon, mistakenly sent to my place.
Brown skirt, beige blouse, sweater buttoned up the front, the woman at the door looked like one of my teachers at school. She had a weary, pretty face. She was about sixty, her hair was white, fine as tufts of cotton.
I repeated my story. She looked blank.
Rolly, the bartender at Pravda22, said Greg had told him there was a room for rent someplace in south London. I took the shot. “I am also a friend of Greg,” I said.
“He left this morning,” she said.
I asked again if she had a room to rent. I told her my name, and she nodded and said, “I am Deborah Curtis.”
I introduced myself.
Without letting me inside, Mrs Curtis told me she owned the house and lived on the ground floor that connected to a garden out back. Yes, she rented out a few rooms. The house was too big for her.
I smiled and was charming. All I wanted was to get inside. I had gambled, and this time I was right.
Sizing me up, she told me that in fact Greg’s room itself was available, and looked sorry that she had said it. “Can you come back later?” she asked.
“Could I just come in and dry off?” I said, smiling, pointing to my dripping hair.
She opened the door wider, showed me a bathroom, I toweled off best I could, and then she led me into a small apartment that had been built onto the back of the house. At the same time the doorbell rang.
Mrs Curtis went away to answer the door, came back to tell me a man had come to clean her carpets. “I’ll be fine,” I said, and she left, looking uneasy.
The apartment was empty, stripped bare of anything personal, except for a beautiful handmade patchwork quilt on the double bed. The only book on the shelf was a Bible. I began to feel London was a city of empty rooms for rent.
For a while I sat on the bed, thinking about Val and the gold cross she had started wearing a year earlier. Often, she had touched it as if touching it would bring luck. She told me once that she had started going to church.
“Don’t look at me as if I’ve turned into some kind of religious freak, Artie, darling,” she said once when we were eating tacos on a warm day in Washington Square Park. “I’m not going to join a convent or something. I’m just going to celebrate my name day, which will be February 23, for St Valentina the Martyr, and I’d like you to be there with me. Will you?”
“Do you like the room?” said Mrs Curtis, standing in the door. In her voice I heard the faintest hint of a Russian accent, the way you can make out the presence of a flavor you can’t quite identify in a certain dish. From behind the glasses with clear rims, her eyes darted from me to the room, as if she was worried she had left something that didn’t belong. She walked a few steps into the room.
In Russian, I said, “What’s the matter?”
She was rattled, but she answered in English.
“Would you like a cup of tea?” she said.
I reached for the door and closed it so she couldn’t leave.
“Tell me about Greg,” I said.
“You said he was your friend.”
“An acquaintance.”
“Actually, there’s nothing to tell,” she said. “He was a nice young man, he was here for a year or so.”
“And his girlfriend?”
“I didn’t meet his girlfriend,” she said, but her eyelids fluttered too fast. “Did he have a girlfriend? I was never certain, you see, it wasn’t my business after all. I really don’t actually know how I can help you.” Her hand shaking, she opened the door, looked over her shoulder at me as if daring me to stop her.
I followed her to the living room.
I could hear a clock ticking.
“Who else lives here?”
“I did say. I generally have a few students in the two spare rooms but it’s summer now and there’s nobody. I did mention it, didn’t I?”
“Well, say again.”
“No one, as I said. Tea?” She moved into the living room, a small crowded room, stuffed with mementos.
On the tables were laquered boxes. On shelves that were crammed with books, Russian dolls, the heavily painted
“When did Greg leave?”
“A few days ago, I think. I’m not sure I remember actually.”
“I’d like that tea, please.”
“Of course,” she said and went into the kitchen, then returned a few minutes later with a tray. On it were a teapot, cups, a plate with cookies. She set it on a low table, and gestured for me to sit down.
“You’ve lived here a long time?”
“Yes,” Mrs Curtis said. “A very long time, one way or another.”
“Things have changed around here?”
“Indeed,” she said.
“Lots of Russians moving in.”
“I suppose. Yes. Why not?”
“You have some connection with them?”
“I’m not sure what you mean. I meet the odd Russian in the shops. Some are quite charming. Very well read.”
“And was Greg Russian?”
“As I told you, he seemed very nice, though I rarely saw him, he worked in the City, he was quiet.”
“How old was he?”
“I really don’t know, Mr Cohen. I imagine he was about thirty.”
“But his business was legitimate?”
“What? Of course, Grisha would never do anything wrong.”
She was angry.
“Grisha?”
I had caught her off guard. My gut tightened up with anticipation. I had been right about this. I tried to keep my hands clasped politely. I tried not to fumble for some smokes. I leaned forward to pick up a teacup. My jacket fell open.
Did she see the gun?
“He sometimes called himself Grisha,” she said. “I believe it was his Russian nickname.”
“So he was Russian.”
“Yes.”
“You would want to know if something happened to this Grisha, I guess.”
She took off her glasses, rubbed her eyes. Her body almost imperceptibly tensed up.
“Has something happened to him?” she said.
“Has it?”
