We drove past a signpost for a town I’d never heard of and I looked at Eduard’s profile, wondering what he was planning. His hand dropped from the steering wheel on to my knee. He squeezed it and downshifted into a turn. Bile rose in my throat.
‘Stop the car!’
‘What?’
‘Now!’
The Mercedes hadn’t quite halted when I catapulted myself from it. Dropping to my knees, I was sick, heaving long after there was nothing to left to expel. Angry tears streamed down my face and tremors racked my body, and still my stomach convulsed.
Eduard kept one hand on my back, steadying me, as the other held my hair away from my face. I was ashamed of my reaction. Maybe even ashamed of my actions.
‘You did what you had to do,’ he said.
‘Does that make it any better?’
I looked down at myself. Dried blood stained the tunic. I rubbed my hand against it, desperate to be free of it – free of the coppery stench. Free of death.
My fingers fumbled with the tunic’s buttons, tearing the last two off in my haste to be rid of the garment. Something fluttered free. I was too clumsy to catch it, but batted it away from the vomit and pounced on the papers before the breeze could scatter them.
Holding them under my knee, I pulled my arms free of the tunic, throwing it aside to claw at the shirt underneath. It stuck to my body, still moist with blood. I ripped it from my shoulders, catching at the cuffs. I pulled, but they wouldn’t give way.
I couldn’t stifle the sob.
Eduard took my trapped hands in his. Murmured nonsense as he undid the buttons, freeing me from the stench. He held me against him as I wept; I didn’t regret killing Köhler or his men. Didn’t regret the men from the warehouse; they would have killed me, given the chance. But so much blood. So much blood on my hands.
‘What’s this?’ Eduard asked, reaching for the papers.
I looked him blankly, then at the papers. There were rows and columns, letters and numbers – codes that made no sense. I forced my brain to slow down, to concentrate. There were three typewritten sheets. Some rows had ticks next to them, but most didn’t. I blinked and the pattern began to emerge. The items with ticks had dates that had passed. Other columns included a time and location, sometimes a handwritten note in the margin. I flipped to the last page, saw a date some months hence and understood what we held.
So did Eduard. ‘Sweet Jesus, Angel. Do you know what this is?’ His dimples flashed as he began to laugh. ‘God in Heaven, you stole the wolfram shipping schedule! Did you know what it was when you took it?’
I shook my head.
‘What did you do? Take it just because it was there?’ I shrugged and he handed the sheets back to me. ‘What do you plan to do with it?’
His voice was neutral, and his face gave nothing away. Was this a test, or something else?
I had neither the resources nor the inclination to act on them myself, but this information could do damage to the smuggling operation enough to put a dent in the German war machine. I tucked the papers into my blouse and buttoned it up.
‘I’m sure I can find a use for them.’
‘Yes, I am quite sure you can.’
Eduard helped me to my feet and opened the car door for me.
He didn’t look upset by this new twist.
*
We continued north-west and I continued to speculate. Why wasn’t Eduard upset? Köhler was no longer a threat, but there was no way of knowing whether his suspicions of Eduard had gone any further. Unless Eduard thought the investigation into him would end with Köhler?
There was another possibility. He might not be a traitor, but I now knew, or at least suspected, that he wasn’t working for the Führer. And that made me a risk. Would he set me up to be caught with stolen documents down my blouse and blood, literally, on my hands? My hand crept to the knife strapped to my thigh. The handle fitted into my hand, and I braced myself for an answer I didn’t want to hear.
‘Eduard?’
‘Angel?’
‘We’re not going home, are we?’
‘Not yet.’
I cleared my throat and freed the sgian-dubh; keeping it close to my side. Hidden by my skirt, my forefinger tapped the tip of the blade, testing how sharp it still was.
He glanced my way and smiled, a sweet, slightly nervous smile.
Just beyond Sintra, we turned into a long drive and stopped at a gate. Thick hedges abutted it, and some way beyond it loomed the upper floor of a peach-coloured villa. Eduard fumbled in his pocket for the keys and pushed the heavy wrought-iron gate open.
He nosed the car through and returned to lock the gate. The hedges were high enough to detract the casual observer from peering through, but wouldn’t stop a determined prisoner from climbing out.
The car bumped over the gravelled road, its protests only slightly louder than that of my heart. Eduard cut the engines outside the villa and looked at me.
‘Where are we?’
‘Villa Aurora. A friend of mine gave me the keys.’ Eduard looked everywhere but at me.
‘Why?’
I put my hand on his arm to get his attention.
‘Eduard. Why are we here?’
‘Holiday?’
He stared at me. Hunger, and fear too, reflected in his gaze. Maybe nerves. He looked at the villa and spoke more to it than to me.
‘I thought it best we spend some time away from Lisbon, from Estoril. Unless, my Angel, you want to return home like that?’
Pink streaks ran down my arms. My fingernails and my soul were caked with blood. He was right. With
