Warily, Eve lifts the small wooden panel in the door – wide enough to slip a food bowl through – and looks out. From the end of the corridor, in the direction from which she was led earlier, come dim, flickering lights. The shouting starts again, the same unintelligible phrase delivered in a furious, desperate rasp. It’s met with the same responses, and the same sharply curtailed groaning. It occurs to Eve that she’s listening to a recording, some kind of looped tape. But if so, why? What would be the point? To intimidate her? That was hardly necessary.
Then, as she crouches by the hatch, looking out, a figure moves into her peripheral vision, and starts walking up the corridor towards her. At the sight of him, Eve once again starts to shake. A man of about forty, with thinning brown hair, wearing a boiler suit, a long leather apron and rubber boots.
As he passes her door, Eve closes the hatch to a crack. She can’t stop watching, and she can’t stop shaking. Moving with the unhurried air of a doctor on a hospital round, the man goes into the room with the hose and the drain and the sloping floor. Perhaps a minute passes, then the two pig-men arrive at the opposite end of the corridor and unlock a cell door. Marching inside, they come out supporting a thin, blankly staring figure in a suit and shirt, and walk him past Eve’s door and into the same room.
Moments later they leave without him, and Eve sinks to the floor of her cell, her eyes as tightly shut as she can force them, and her hands clamped over her ears. But she still hears the shots. Two of them, seconds apart. And she’s so terrified she can no longer think, or breathe, or control any part of herself, and she just lies there in the darkness, shaking.
Somehow, probably from sheer exhaustion, she sleeps, and is woken by a hammering at the cell door. The lights are on again and there’s a faint smell of cooked meat. At that moment the only thing that she’s sure of is her hunger. She limps to the communication hatch, her mouth dry and her guts twisting with longing.
‘Da?’
‘Zavtrak!’ a voice growls. ‘Breakfast.’
With that, the hatch opens and a red box is pushed through by a large, hairy hand. It’s a McDonald’s Happy Meal, and it seems to be still hot. It’s followed by a canned energy drink called Russian Power. Eve stares disbelievingly at these luxuries before ripping open the McDonald’s box, and with trembling fingers devouring the contents. In the box with the hamburger and french fries there’s a cellophane-wrapped toy. A tiny plastic teapot with a Hello Kitty face on it.
Eve wipes her greasy, salty fingers on her jeans then rips the tab from the Russian Power can and gulps down as much as she can before sinking back, gasping, onto the bench. Nothing makes sense any more. Pulling the bucket to the door so that she can’t be seen through the hatch, she pees in it, pours the urine down the sink, and washes her hands and the bucket with the trickling brown tap water. Her bowels give a warning grumble, but shitting in the bucket is an indignity she’s not yet ready for, although she’s resigned to the fact that that time will come. Turning the french fries packet inside out, she licks up the last of the salt, and takes a measured sip of Russian Power. Was this a last meal before being dragged to the room with the concrete floor, the hose and the drain? I’m sorry, Niko my love. I’m so, so sorry.
The door swings abruptly open. It’s the two pig-men. They beckon to her, and she limps towards them, her hand closed tightly around the little teapot in her pocket. When they lead her past the killing room, her heart is pounding so hard that it hurts. Then, instead of continuing along the corridor, they open a cell door, beyond which is an elevator. Not the filthy service cage that she came down in, but a hotel-style guest elevator with a brushed steel interior. This ascends smoothly and silently to a half-landing, and a short flight of stairs leading to the tiled atrium, where the same two officers in the over-large caps are sitting behind the trestle table. Waiting on the table are her parka jacket and the tray holding her possessions.
Glancing nervously at the officers, who barely acknowledge her presence, she pulls on the parka, glad of its warmth and of the chance to cover up her dirty sweater. Hurriedly, she loads the pockets with her passport, watch, phone, keys and money.
‘Obuv,’ says one of the pig-men, gesturing with his foot to a pair of short winter boots trimmed with rabbit fur.
Gratefully, Eve pulls them on. They fit perfectly.
‘OK,’ says the other pig-man, moving back towards the stairs to the elevator. ‘You come.’
They rise several storeys, and step out onto parquet flooring and a worn carpet the colour of raw liver. At the end of the corridor, a dark wood door stands ajar. Inside, the office is all shadows. Nondescript curtains frame tall windows. Behind a mahogany desk a broad-shouldered, silver-haired figure is hunched over a laptop computer.
‘Can you believe Kim Kardashian?’ he says, waving a hand to dismiss the pig-men. ‘Surely no one’s really that shape?’
Eve peers at him. He’s probably in his mid-fifties, with buzz-cut hair and a wry, urbane smile. His suit looks handmade.
He
