Somewhere a phone started to ring. She looked around and realised it was coming from Patrick’s work bag which he’d set down on one of the armchairs. After a few rings Patrick shouted something.
‘I beg your pardon, what?’ she called back.
He shouted something again. She wasn’t sure, but there was urgency in his voice and it sounded like
Get that!
, so she hurried over to the bag to try and answer the phone before the ringing stopped. It was probably Cathy.
She opened the flap of the bag. The lit-up screen of the mobile phone was visible inside the front pocket, so she quickly stuck her hand in to grab it, but the call ended just as she brought it out of the bag. Annoyed she stared at the dead phone in her hand.
And then she noticed something else. With the phone, she’d inadvertently taken out another item.
Something she recognised.
Something she’d hoped she would never again see.
Cold dread filled her as she stared at the small object in her hand: a brightly coloured piece of paper. Folded into one triangle first and then into another. An exact replica of the three notes that had been delivered to her at the hotel. Amelia’s heart started pounding. It couldn’t be . . .
‘I told you
not
to get the phone,’ Patrick suddenly said from above her, his voice no longer warm and friendly.
She looked up and saw him standing on the small landing halfway down the staircase. He was looking at her coldly, his eyes confirming what couldn’t possibly be true. Then he dropped his gaze to the note in her hand.
‘You should never have come back, Amelia,’ he said as he came down the last few steps. ‘Did I not try to warn you?’
A
melia felt her fingers lose their grip on the note. As if from afar, she watched as it fluttered to the ground and came to rest in the space between her and Patrick. She stared at it uncomprehendingly.
For dizzying seconds disjointed memories flooded into her mind. She struggled to grasp their significance, but knew that all along each had meant something, and worse, that she’d failed to see their collective meaning.
So many things should have made her suspicious: Patrick’s failure to inform her of the new information Kiriyenko had found; his claim that Robert had dropped him off at home on the night of Robert’s disappearance; the conflicting version of the old man at the Canadian party who told her about leaving the hotel at the same time as Patrick; Cathy’s concerns about how Patrick had changed; Ratna’s comments about the tension between Patrick and Robert . . .
The pounding in her ears told her she was wide awake, but it felt as if she was acting out a nightmare. It simply couldn’t be. Could it? Had Patrick been involved all along? But what about Sibraz and Prism? How did it all fit together?
She stared down at the piece of brightly coloured notepaper again. Had he been the one who had left the notes? But why . . . and how . . . ?
Then another memory hit her.
That man with the eyes.
Novodevichy and Mikhail’s angry face. Not Jennings’ eyes with their golden flecks, as she’d thought before she’d discovered that Mikhail worked for Jennings, but Patrick’s bright blue eyes. But how did Mikhail know Patrick?
She looked from Patrick’s dispassionate gaze to the picture of him and Cathy which she’d admired only minutes before. In it his blue eyes sparkled so innocently and happily for the camera. She shook her head, unable to comprehend or control the flood of thoughts.
Had she looked in the wrong places all along? Had she known, somewhere in her subconscious, that all was not as it should be with Patrick? Had she been too afraid to acknowledge to herself that something was amiss? Or was there a simple explanation for the note in her hand and the sudden change in his behaviour?
A wave of light-headedness threatened to overwhelm her. Her mind became disconnected from her body and she could feel herself start to fall. She gripped the sofa’s arm in a desperate effort to stop herself.
When she looked up at Patrick, her last hope that this was all a mistake was crushed. The confirmation stood clear on his face: it was no longer shiny and happy, but cold and filled with a dark melancholy.
‘I don’t understand this.’
He didn’t answer.
‘Why, Patrick?’
Still he didn’t answer.
‘This isn’t at all what I expected,’ Amelia said, half to herself. Her remark seemed to amuse him. She was amazed to see a smile flit across his face.
‘It’s not what I expected either,’ he replied dryly. ‘I never expected to be pushed to these extremes or that I would be forced to do the things I’ve done.’
‘Forced?’ Amelia exclaimed, incredulous at the sound of self-righteousness in his tone. ‘Who forced you? And what have you done exactly?’
He smiled faintly, condescendingly. ‘You won’t understand, Amelia. The pressures, the complexities, the stress . . . You don’t live in my world. You may have had half a foot in it a year ago, but not anymore. I don’t think you can begin to understand what I went through. Besides, there’s no point in talking about this now. Whether you would understand or not doesn’t really matter now. What’s done is done.’
Amelia was about to give voice to the small flame of anger she could feel igniting in her chest, but Patrick crossed the space between them in two long steps before she could speak. He grabbed her arm roughly and swung her around forcefully. Her back was pinned against his left arm and his left hand twisted her elbow painfully behind her. Immediately she felt a sharp prod in her right side. The sudden pain made her gasp and in the moment of weakness, Patrick was able to tighten his grip on her further. She strained against him, but couldn’t see what he was holding in his right hand.
‘We’re leaving now,’ he announced in an unfamiliar, steely voice. She could feel his lips against her ear and flinched at the forced closeness with him.
‘You will not put up a fight, because I have come too far to allow you to ruin things for me now.’
‘What are you doing?’ Amelia struggled against him, but his grip only tightened. For extra measure he again rammed something three times, in quick succession, into the soft spot just below her ribcage. She recoiled and tried to pull away, but he allowed her no freedom to move.
‘I don’t think you understand how serious I am, Amelia. Stop struggling and cooperate. Or it will become more painful.’
Subdued for the moment, pain throbbing in her side, she could only nod as the reality of the situation dawned on her. This was neither a joke nor a mistake and as she sensed his unwavering intent to do things his way, she realised that her chances of getting out of it were diminishing rapidly.
She needed to take action, needed time to think of a plan or a moment to gain control of the situation. Patrick’s grip was unyielding, however, and she was helpless to do anything as he started to drag her out of the room towards the front door. She dug in her heels and tried to get a grip on the banister as they passed the bottom of the stairs, but he was simply too strong. Frantically she looked around for another way out, but it was in vain. The last thing she saw as he pulled her from the room was the brightly coloured piece of notepaper lying on the plush cream carpet.
‘Walk normally,’ he ordered as he paused for only a brief moment outside the front door. The narrow residential streets of the complex lay deserted to either side. At the far end of the street, Amelia could see a group of children riding their bicycles, but she was sure they would be too far away to notice that anything was amiss.
Patrick yanked her to the right, away from where the children were playing, and started walking. He hadn’t given her time to put on her coat again and she could immediately feel the sharp cold through her sweater.
‘If we run into someone, don’t even think of trying something,’ Patrick said, pressing against the already tender spot below her ribcage again. ‘You’ll only speed up your fate and put them at risk too.’
Your fate? What was he planning?
‘Where are we going? Where are you taking me?’
‘Away from here,’ he replied cryptically and she thought she could hear something akin to amusement in his voice again, as if it was the most absurd, inconsequential question she could have asked in the circumstances.
‘Patrick, what’s going on? Why did you leave those notes for me, what’s happened to make you do this? You’ve always been a good man—’
‘Shut up, Amelia,’ he said roughly. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’
‘Please just tell me, ‘Amelia tried again, but stopped short when she heard hysteria creeping into her voice. The last thing she could afford was to lose what little control she had of herself.
‘That’s better – silence. So much better.’
Stay calm. Stay calm. Think, look around
, Amelia urged herself. There had to be an opportunity to get away from him.
Just stay calm and stay alert
.
The road curved to the right and soon the vast complex of the Anglo-American international school appeared on their left while the residential complex continued on the right. For a moment Amelia thought he was going to take her into the school’s grounds. She shivered as she thought of the many deserted areas there would be inside the property on a Sunday. He would have no difficulty in staying out of sight.
Yet he continued walking, forcing her forward.
‘Move!’ he ordered when she slowed. No one was about and to her dismay curtains and blinds were drawn against the cold in most windows. As the last of the houses disappeared behind them, a cold panic got hold of Amelia. Had she lost her chance? Should she have tried to make a run for it while there were still people around? She could shout, but he’d warned her against that. What if it was a gun he had in his hand? Based on the lack of emotion in his eyes, her guess was that he would be willing to use it.
The street they were walking along gave way to a narrow pedestrian path and after a few hundred metres they found themselves in front of a gate in the steel fence that surrounded the compound. It appeared to be locked, but Patrick waved a plastic card in front of an electronic reader and a buzz released the gate. As it clicked shut behind them again, Amelia knew she had to do something. Proximity to the many foreigners inside the complex was her only chance. Desperately she twisted in Patrick’s grip and for a moment she was able to look into his eyes.
‘Patrick, stop this!’ she pleaded. ‘Think about what you’re doing,’ she urged him. ‘I’m sure you think there’s no other way out, but I’m certain there is. We can work something out, just tell me what’s driving you to do this!’
In reply, he merely gripped her shoulder more tightly and forced her to continue along the pedestrian path that wound through a patch of trees, their branches stark and bare. The last of the compound’s houses disappeared behind them.
‘I’m not crazy, Amelia,’ he finally said, his voice utterly calm and normal, the voice that was so familiar to her. ‘Reason with the crazy person, get him to confide in you . . . Please, it’s laughable. This is not a movie, I’m not crazy and it’s not going to work on me. I know exactly what I’m doing.’ There was a slight hesitation before he spoke again. ‘I may not like what this has come to and I certainly don’t relish what I have to do today, but I still have to do it. There
is
no other choice.’
‘There’s always a choice!’ she protested.
He gave a derisive snort. ‘A cheap and cheesy line, Amelia. I didn’t expect it from you. You know as well as I do that it’s rarely true.’
As they continued walking along the path, Amelia felt a momentary, if surreal, sense of calm. Numbly she kept moving, pressed against him. They came to a street and he held her back until he was sure there were no cars approaching. Quickly they crossed before he led her across another patch of bare land and turned right onto what appeared to be a service road that ran alongside an embankment of some kind.
Fifty metres on, he forced her to take a sharp left and pushed her up a short flight of narrow concrete steps. As she reached the top of the stairs, his hands still digging into her arms, she could see that they were on what appeared to be the bank of a river. Maybe it was a side branch of the Moscow River, she thought, but when he pushed her a few steps further onto the narrow foot-bridge that crossed it, she looked down and saw that it was actually a man-made canal, most likely made for boats coming in to deliver goods to a loading dock further up the river. The canal was divided into chambers divided by massive shipping locks which would drain and flood each chamber when a boat needed to pass through. Frantically she scanned the control tower she spotted on the side of the canal, but like the surrounding area, it was deserted.
With sudden dread she knew that he was planning to throw her into the water. She knew that the water in these canals were not that deep, around four to five metres, but the old concrete walls, which looked like they stretched at least fifteen to twenty metres high, appeared to offer no way out once you were in. She would probably freeze before she’d be able to find a way out. Was he going to kill her? Was she going to die without the final answers? If that was Patrick’s plan, he couldn’t have chosen a better spot. She would have to act fast.
Without thinking about it, Amelia twisted in Patrick’s grip. Frantically, repeatedly, painfully she twisted and tugged until she could feel some freedom from his grip. She spun around, wanting to keep him in her sight, and took a few rapid steps backwards along the bridge. His face showed fleeting surprise before he recovered and started coming towards her again. She could now see that he was holding a short, iron bar in his hand.
‘Did you kill Robert, Patrick?’ she shouted her question. It seemed to stop him in his tracks momentarily.
He hesitated. ‘No.’
Amelia gasped for air, glaring at him. ‘Then why do you feel you have to kill me?’
‘At least not technically,’ he continued as if he hadn’t heard her second question. His gaze dropped to the water below them and it looked like his thoughts drifted to a different place for a fraction of a moment.