Die for Me (Killing Eve #3) - Luke Jennings Page 0,69
it acknowledges and orders it. It gives it a place.
Evening comes early, bringing with it a sharp wind that scours the snowfields and sends crystalline trails flying through our headlight beams. We stop for the night at a featureless town in the Svechinsky district. Our hostel is a single-story cinder-block building attached to a motorway service station. The rooms are unprepossessing, but Alexei tells me that the food in the all-night café is good. I try to eat, but I can’t swallow. Tears run down my nose and drip onto the plate.
Alexei puts down his fork, passes me a paper napkin and tells me about his home life. He’s divorced, and met Vika a year ago at a fellow-officer’s birthday drinks. Vika works in the Moscow State University library. She’s also divorced, with a football-crazy young son who Alexei says “has been running wild too long.” They live in a block near Lubyanka Square exclusively occupied by FSB officers and their families. A neighbor takes Archie for walks during the day.
I half listen, grateful not to have to talk, and walk to my room with the Glock weighing down my coat pocket. In the washbag I find a box of sleeping pills. I take one, climb into bed and listen to the rumble of the trucks outside. Sleep comes blessedly fast.
In the morning we start early, and drive for a further nine hours. Today the sky is clearer, and sunlight pushes through the cloud cover, illuminating the frozen fields and the ice-silvered lakes. The terrain begins to change as we approach the Perm Krai. This is deep Russia, and as the snow’s glitter fades the rivers and forests are briefly suffused in soft, glowing pink.
The Azov Hotel is a tiny, one-star place in a side street off Ulitsa Pushkina in central Perm. Alexei pulls up outside shortly after 10 p.m., walks me inside, stamps the snow from his boots, and has an inaudible conversation with the elderly man behind the reception desk.
My room has been paid for, Alexei tells me, and I will be contacted there at some point over the next few days. Reaching into his coat pocket, he hands me a wallet containing a wad of banknotes and a Gazprombank debit card. I probably look as lost as I feel, for Alexei gives me a quick, soldierly hug, squeezes my hand, and wishes me courage. Then he climbs back into the Lada, backs out onto the street, and drives away.
My room is small, with a liver-colored carpet and a single window overlooking the street. Drawn net curtains admit a thin, diffuse light. There’s a divan bed covered by a crocheted blanket, a wooden chest of drawers, and a miniature fridge that throbs so loudly that I turn it off within ten minutes of moving in.
On the windowsill, behind the curtains, I discover a pack of tarot cards. Left behind, I assume, by a previous tenant. I have no idea of the supposed meaning of the cards, but I spend hours sitting on the bed, turning them over one by one, and gazing at the strange, enigmatic images. The angel on the judgment card looks like Oxana. I am the ten of swords, pierced through and through.
This room, and the snowbound streets around the hotel, become my world. I sleep late, eat my lunch at the café over the road, and walk until it gets dark. On my first day I make my way up Komsomolsky Prospekt. I’m glad of the light and warmth of the department stores, but something about the family groups in their coats and headscarves and snow boots upsets me. I feel that I no longer belong among them, and seek out quieter routes in the neighboring park and along the River Kama.
The Café Skazka is dim and steamy, and the middle-aged couple that run it are friendly, acknowledging me with a smile and a raised hand when I come in, and leaving me to linger over my tea. On the fifth morning their daughter, who works in the café at weekends, refills my cup and offers me a day-old copy of Pravda.
I haven’t read a newspaper since arriving in Perm, and I’ve hurried past the shops and bars that have TVs playing, because they always seem to be showing images of the murdered presidents. I’m not ready to learn about it, or to read about Oxana dying, although God knows I’ve thought about little else. I accept the offer of the paper, nevertheless, touched