carving out an endless warren, an intricate dark hollowing. Its whorls and chambers ramified in all directions, turning and twisting and burrowing, spiral shadow tunnellings of limitless extent, unlit by the absent sun but warmed by the heart of the earth. It was all rootwork: the roots of the rock and the roots of the trees. It was matrix and web. Fibrous roots of air, filaments of energy and space, knitted everything to everything else in the chamber of the sleeping god’s dream.
He was lying on his back and great taproots drove down through his ribs. A tree limb speared up out of his groin. Water trickled over him. Rootlets slipped down, fingering his pinioned body, brushing and touching gently. The roots of the great trees drank from the buried god as their leaves drank the sun.
Up in the light the trees mingled their crowns in one great leafhead and exhaled the good, living air of the world. The air she drank on the paluba’s breath.
And there was a man walking there among the trees. She knew that he was her father and he knew that she was there, and he greeted her, and she understood why her mother had loved him and why she had to leave and how the leaving had been her death.
48
Lom sat bolt upright in his seat on the tram. The file! Chazia would come for it, and she would find Vishnik. Maroussia.
He had to do something. Now.
The tram had stopped. An anonymous place somewhere away from the centre of the city. Across the street was a hotel, a telephone cable running to it from a pole in the centre of the square. Lom ran across. THE GRAND PENSION CHESMA. Wet zinc tables under a dripping wrought iron veranda. Steep marble steps up to a chipped, discoloured portico. A handwritten card propped in a small side window: Closed For Winter. Lom hammered on the door.
‘Open up! Police!’
The paint on the door was peeling, revealing sinewy bleached grey wood. There was an ivory button in a verdigrised surround. BELL, it said. PORTER. He pressed it, more in hope than expectation, and kicked at the door.
‘Police! Open or I break it down.’
There was a noise of bolts being pulled back. The door opened. A porter in sabots and a brown overall eyed him warily.
‘You don’t look like police.’ We wouldn’t take you as a guest.
Lom shoved the door open and shouldered his way past the porter into the dim hall. A suggestion of wing-backed chairs and ottomans draped with grey sheets. A smell of old cooking and older carpets. Dampness, dust and the sea. Lom unbuttoned his cloak.
‘This is a uniform,’ he said. ‘And this is a gun. I need to telephone. Now.’
The porter led him into a back room. There was a phone on the desk. The porter lingered uneasily.
‘Don’t stand there gawking. I’m hungry. Get me some sausage. And a mug of tea.’
It took Lom for ever to negotiate his way past a series of operators, getting through first to the Lodka and then to Krogh’s office. The private secretary’s voice came on the line.
‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Who is this?’
‘It’s Lom. I need to speak to him. Now.’
‘Ah. Investigator Lom. The Under Secretary was beginning to wonder whether you might not have taken a train back to Podchornok. You haven’t, have you? Where exactly is it you are calling from?’
‘Just put me through to him.’
‘I’m afraid he’s not available at the moment. His diary is very full. If you’ll tell me where you are, or give me the number, I’ll arrange for him to return your call some time this afternoon. Unless you’d like me to make you an appointment to see him. I’m sure he would be most—’
‘Stop pissing me about and put me through.’
There was a hiss of indrawn breath and the line went dead. Fuck.
He was about to hang up when he heard the tired dry voice of Krogh.
‘Yes, Investigator. Something to report?’
‘Can I speak?’
‘Of course.’
‘I mean, this call is private? Bag carrier not listening?’
‘Just give me your report, Lom. I was playing this game when you were at school.’
‘Perhaps you’re getting complacent. Are you sure you’re secure?’
‘Of course I am, man. There are systems. Arrangements.’
‘That’s what Chazia thought, but she was stupid. She relied on the systems because she’d made them, but getting in wasn’t even hard.’
There was a pause.
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Maybe she’s listening now.’
‘That’s ridiculous. You’re hysterical. Perhaps I made a mistake about you.’