The train pulled to a stop and the doors buzzed. A few sleepy passengers began to move.
“You need to go,” Allissa said, breaking off the hug.
“Yep,” Leo said, stepping backwards. “See you tomorrow.”
Through the window, Allissa watched Leo pull his backpack tight and head for the exit. As the train started to move, she looked away. She would be there tomorrow. It was just a few hours. But regardless of the time, somewhere within her, a sense of deep foreboding grew unbidden.
17
Anafisa fought for breath as the man’s thick hands closed around her neck. She felt each finger tightening, constricting, extinguishing. She felt each individual muscle pushing down on her throat. She grabbed at his wrists, but they didn’t move. Beneath his cold skin, the muscles pulled tighter. She scratched at his face. One of her dazzling nails caught his shaved head. It was cold and hard, like marble.
He lengthened his arms and pushed her against the wall. She thudded to the plaster. Two paintings fell. Glass smashed across the floor. He shoved her again. Anafisa felt the last bit of air leave her lungs.
“You have two options,” he grunted in their native Russian. “I’m coming back in one week, and I’ll either be taking my money or” — his right hand released her neck and grabbed her by the wrist — “I’ll be taking one of these pretty fingers for each ten-thousand you owe me.”
Anafisa felt the floor rush up to meet her as the man let her go. She took several greedy breaths then opened her eyes.
Anafisa shot up in the bed. The sheets, tangled around her writhing body, were wet from sweat. She was breathless. She looked around. She wasn’t at home, but she was alone.
That was unusual. It was unlike Keal to get up early. Anafisa pushed herself up in the bed and let her breathing subside. She had dreamt about the man’s visit for the last four nights. She had three days to find his money.
Anafisa reached to the bedside table and picked up her handbag. Her clothes were strewn across the floor. Opening the bag, she checked the money Keal had given her last night. He had paid her well, and it hadn’t even taken that long. These gangster types were all about the show. It was all about massaging their ego. They wanted to go out and look good. Hang around in some exclusive bars, drink champagne and snort cocaine. By the time they got home, they were done after a few pumps. That was if things down there were working at all by then. Either way, it didn’t matter to Anafisa.
Anafisa exhaled and rubbed a hand across her neck. She counted the money again. She still didn’t have enough.
She would have to sell something, after all. Her thoughts ran to her gleaming Maserati Levante parked outside. She could probably cover the debt if she sold that, but then what was she supposed to drive?
When Anafisa had moved to Berlin, she had it all going for her. She had a lump sum of money from her husband’s estate, the apartment in Berlin, one in the Alps, jewellery and all the rest. She was set for life.
Where did it all go wrong?
Anafisa dropped her handbag to the bed and saw the exact reason it went wrong. It glimmered at her from the bedside table. Keal must have left it. He wouldn’t mind if she had a taste. Anafisa reached over and picked up the bag of cocaine. It was a big one, a few grams at least. Normally she would smoke it, but there was no time right now. She dove a long nail expertly into the powder and brought it up to her nose. Then she inhaled, and the beasts of addiction faded away.
That was the problem. That was where it all went wrong.
But the thing was…
Anafisa settled back into the pillows.
The thing was…
Anafisa didn’t know what the thing was. She couldn’t remember now. Anafisa smiled as a wave of warmth shrouded her body. Whatever “the thing” was, how could it matter when she felt this good?
She closed her eyes again. Anafisa didn’t even consider what the white powder had cost her. The money she’d lost. The flat she’d had to mortgage. The money she’d had to borrow from one of Berlin’s most dangerous men.
Settling back in the bed, Anafisa actually thought of nothing. Anafisa loved thinking of nothing.
If she had been capable of thought, though, she would have cursed the day she’d ever met Olezka Ivankov.
18
Watching Berlin slide beneath the belly of the Boeing, Leo thought about the flight he’d taken into Kathmandu. He remembered looking out at the sprawling concrete chaos of the mountain city, and the overwhelming feeling of walking out amongst the noise, the dust and the oppressive heat.
Berlin looked different; organised and sedate. There were vast open spaces of green, wide boulevards and lazily snaking rivers. It was a city largely devoid of tall buildings, but it seemed to sprawl, calm and sensitive, into the hazy horizon. That’s reassuring, Leo thought as he sipped from his bottle of water.
Not only was this city vastly different from Kathmandu, but he felt different too. Back then, he’d had no idea how to find someone in the real world. But he’d done it, and, he supposed slightly pretentiously, he’d found a stronger version of himself along the way. Of course, his anxiety was still there. It always would be. It was a part of him; like his dislike for shellfish, his knobbly knees or his inability to tolerate the music of Take That. But, thankfully, although it occasionally reared its ugly, all-encompassing head, it was no longer his mind’s default setting.
His new life seemed to ground him. It gave him purpose. He loved the intensity of the research process; working hard to get into someone’s personality and see things from their perspective. Despite his anxious
