Part 53 (1/2)

She leans closer.

It's hard to see in the dark.

A deer, it must have been a deer, she thinks, and closes the curtain with her heart pounding.

She sits down on the sofa, switches the television off and starts to text Adam. In the middle of a sentence her phone rings, scaring her so much that she jumps.

She doesn't recognise the number.

'Katryna,' she says warily.

'h.e.l.lo, Katryna,' a man says quickly. 'I'm one of Adam's colleagues at National Crime, and-'

'He's not-'

'Listen now,' the man interrupts. 'Are you at home?'

'Yes, I'm-'

'Go to the front door and leave the house, don't worry about clothes or shoes, just go straight out into the street and carry on walking.'

'Can I ask why?'

'Are you on your way out?'

'I'm going now.'

She stands up and starts to walk through the room, looking towards the cupboard doors as she goes round the sofa and turns towards the front door.

A person wearing yellow rain-clothes is standing on the doormat with their back to her, closing the front door behind them.

Katryna quickly moves backwards, goes round the corner and stops.

'There's someone in here,' she whispers. 'I can't get out.'

'Lock yourself in somewhere, and leave your phone on.'

'G.o.d, there's nowhere to-'

'Don't speak unless you absolutely have to, go to the bathroom.'

She's walking on unsteady legs towards the kitchen when she sees that the doors to the cleaning cupboard have slid open slightly. She can't think straight, and opens one of the doors, slips quickly inside and stands beside the vacuum cleaner, and pulls the door closed behind her.

It's hard to close it properly when her fingers won't fit in the gap. She tries to get hold of the edge with her nails and pull it towards her.

Katryna holds her breath when she hears footsteps outside the cupboard. They move off in the direction of the kitchen, the doors knock against each other the other door slips open a couple of millimetres.

She stands in the darkness with her eyes open wide, and hears a kitchen drawer being opened. There's a metallic clattering sound, and she's breathing in short gasps, and suddenly thinks about the relic in the church in Sdertlje. Adam didn't want to go in with her, but she went and looked at it anyway. It was a fragment of bone belonging to Thomas, one of the apostles. The priest claimed that the Holy Spirit was still present in the relic, in the yellow fragment of bone inside the gla.s.s tube on the marble table.

She reaches out her hand and tries to close the door, but can't get any grip, her nails just slide over the wood. She moves carefully to the side, but the mop and bucket are in the way. The handle of the mop touches her winter coat, and a few empty hangers rattle softly on the rail.

She manages to pull the door closed, but loses her grip again. It swings open slightly and she can see a dark figure standing right outside the cupboard.

91.

The door is yanked open and a man with a pistol steps backwards. His mouth is half-open and his dark brown eyes are staring at her. A smell of sweat reaches her. She registers every detail at that moment. His worn jeans with turned-up cuffs, the gra.s.s stain on his right knee, his padded black nylon jacket, and the logo of the New York Yankees sewn badly on to his cap.

'I'm a police officer,' he says in a gasp, and lowers his gun.

'Oh, G.o.d,' she whispers, and feels tears begin to flow.

He takes her hand and leads her towards the hall as he reports back to control on his radio: 'Katryna is unharmed but the suspect fled through the kitchen door ... yes, get the road-blocks set up and send some dog-units over here ...'

She walks beside the police officer, leaning her hand against the wall, brus.h.i.+ng against her diploma from her make-up course.

'Give me a moment,' the officer says, and opens the front door to secure their exit.

Katryna bends down to put her trainers on as a cascade of blood sprays across the hall mirror. Then she hears the sharp crack of the gun and the echo from the house on the other side of the road.

The plain-clothes officer throws his arm out, manages to grab the coats and pulls them with him as he falls. He collapses on his back among the shoes. The hangers rattle as blood pulses from the bullet-hole in his black jacket.

'Hide,' he gasps. 'Go and hide again ...'

Two further shots ring out and Katryna moves backwards. Someone is screaming like an animal outside. She stares at the wounded police officer, and at the blood seeping along the cracks in the tiled floor. A window pane shatters as another shot echoes through the neighbourhood.

Katryna runs at a crouch through the living room, slipping on the Tabriz rug and hitting her shoulder against the wall, but she manages to keep her balance, carries on out into the pa.s.sageway and opens one of the cleaning cupboard doors. The mop handle falls out, pulling the red bucket with it, and the strainer comes loose and clatters on to the floor. Katryna picks the mop up and tries to get it to stand up among the clothes. A jacket falls down and the thick hose of the vacuum cleaner pushes the other door open.

She hears two more shots, leaves the cupboard and carries on towards the kitchen. She sees the gla.s.s door and the darkness outside, opens the cellar door and starts to go down the steep staircase.

She's so frightened she can barely breathe, and can only think that this is an organised hate-based crime, that the racists have found them, that they're upset about Adam buying a new Jaguar.

She can hear police cars through the stone walls, and thinks that she can hide in the boiler room until the police have caught the intruder.

Her anxiety increases as she heads down into the darkness.

She clings on to the cool handrail, blinks and opens her eyes wide, but can hardly see a thing.

The air smells of stone, damp pipes and oil from the boiler.

She's treading carefully, but the steps still creak under her weight. Finally she reaches the tiled floor. She blinks and can make out the was.h.i.+ng machine as a paler shape in the darkness next to the door with the rope around its handle. She turns round and moves in the opposite direction, past Adam's old pinball machine, and into the boiler room. She carefully closes the door behind her and hears a whining sound.

Katryna stands still with her fingers on the door handle, listening. The pipes are clicking faintly, but otherwise everything is quiet.