Reckoning Point, стр. 6
Some of the neighbours complained time and time again to the landlord. Others who lived in the apartment block joined in. The landlord lived away and couldn’t keep a close eye on things, so he let it slide. This suited us just fine.
All in all the parties were the best fun I’d ever had and they would have continued like that for the rest of our lives, had it not been for Mark Braith.
No, when he joined the party as a stranger, he wormed his way in. He appeared charming and I could see the three brothers looked at him the way I looked at them.
And for the first time in my life, I could see something that they couldn’t.
For the first time in my life, I was the smart one.
Mark Braith was a frightening man.
Mark Braith would be the end of us all.
There was only one person in Scheveningen who would turn out to be mightier than Mark Braith, and that was the Colonel. We all knew of him, but none of us actually knew him. He was way out of our league, the stuff that legends and folklore are made of.
Eventually I would count this great man as a friend, a father figure, but not yet, not in the year 2000. It would take a lot of months and a lot of trouble before I got to meet him.
6
ALEX
SOHO to FITZROVIA, LONDON
3.7.15 Early afternoon
Alex sways as he walks out on to Old Compton Street and realises he is not as sober as he had hoped. He squints at his watch, shoves his hands in his pocket without registering the time and decides to walk over to her flat.
He walks through Soho at a swift pace, reaching Great Titchfield Street in ten minutes. He stands across the road from her building, looking up at her window. She’s not there; in his whiskey-fuelled mind he’s sure that if she were in there, his very bones would feel it. Some part of him – the old part – scoffs at this train of thought. Alex doesn’t think in terms of love or endearment. He has always been a man of science, of proof and evidence.
But even though she’s not in there he doesn’t leave. This is as good a place as any to be right now. All her things are in there, she left so quickly he’s sure she wouldn’t have had time to pack it all up. Idly he wonders, if she is not coming back, will she send someone to get everything from inside? If he waits here long enough, will a removal van turn up? Or does she not care about possessions and material things left behind? Knowing her a little, Alex thinks the latter is the most likely.
The thought of that, of losing her forever, brings a sharp pain to his chest and he leans against the pillar of the Kings Canary, staring upwards at her window.
As he looks at the building the door creaks open and seeing his chance to get inside he runs across the road. “Hold the door!” he calls.
The woman exiting the communal door checks Alex out and with one glance seems to decide that he doesn’t live there and has no business asking her to hold the door. She lets it go, throws what seems to be a triumphant look at him and jogs off the down the road without a backward glance.
Alex darts up the stairs, catching his foot in the process on the concrete step. He lurches forward, landing hard on the porch. He hears feet slapping the pavement fading into the distance and rolling over he manages to stick his foot in the heavy blue door, swearing out loud as it traps his ankle. Alex struggles to sit up, glances around to ensure nobody has witnessed his humiliation and sees the woman turning into Foley Street at a jog.
Using the door to lever himself up, still in a half crouch, Alex slips inside the lobby of Elian’s building.
It takes all of his remaining strength to walk up the three flights of stairs and that already old joke they shared about his physical fitness threatens to bring tears to his eyes. To dispel the emotion Alex concentrates on the tiled stairs, the date engraved on every single one from the 18th century, the manufacturer name and the borough of London. At Elian’s door he places a hand palm down on it, runs his finger over the many locks. With growing desperation he squats down and lifts up the doormat. No key. Taking out his iPhone – new, because the original one was destroyed in Chernobyl – he takes numerous photos of each of the five locks from every angle. Finally, he knocks on the door, not expecting, and not getting a response.
He thinks of the times he has been here before. The first time, a few months before, when Elian was only there to be used by him to get what he wanted, in that case it was information that would lead him to those he was being hired to investigate in Chernobyl. Then, another time, only weeks ago, when he had followed her here after the horrifying ordeal she had faced after he had made her assist him in the Chernobyl case. He has no good memories of this building in Fitrovia, in fact each time he had been here had just driven home to him what sort of person he was. Or had been, he liked to think. Because he was trying to do the right thing, trying to help her, falling in love with her, letting