Chapter Twenty

Rose had said that Rakić was smart.

Brask had thought he was an animal.

Now the Croatian gangster looked out of his mind.

‘Dmitry. Take it easy. Take it easy, now.’

The Croat’s piercing eyes were bloodshot and heavy-lidded, his chin dark with stubble, his clothes obviously a few days old. But his grip on the gun was rock steady.

‘This,’ he said, ‘is for Katerina.’

Brask raised his hands. This is what comes of playing at policemen, he thought disgustedly. ‘Don’t. Please.’

‘You. You kill her. My Katerina.’ Brask could see a vein pounding in Dmitry’s heavy right biceps.

Brask shook his head urgently. ‘No. No. Not me. Dmitry, believe me – I’d never hurt Katerina.’

‘Liar.’ The man took a pace forwards across the office threshold. Again: ‘Liar.’

On campus in broad daylight, waving a gun around, making no attempt to hide, even to be quiet: this is a man, Brask thought, with nothing left to live for. A dangerous man. No, Brask corrected himself. Rakić had always been dangerous. Now he was a bomb ready to blow.

Brask heard a shuffling noise in the corridor outside. Rakić heard it too and, wild-eyed, turned sharply, levelled the gun at whoever had surprised him. Brask couldn’t see who was there but he heard a gasp followed by a low whimper.

‘Don’t shoot, Dmitry!’ Brask cried, leaping to his feet.

Dmitry cocked the gun.

Between Dmitry and the door frame Brask could now make out the stunned, sheep-like face of Professor Sir Harold Warde-Fowler. A great authority on English religious sects of the mid-seventeenth century. Ninety-two years of age and, unfortunately for him, an early riser.

Rakić was sighting the gun right between the old scholar’s eyes.

‘Dmitry!’ Brask yelled. ‘Dmitry!’

The Croat looked round. A glaze seemed to lift from his eyes as he abruptly remembered why he’d come to All Souls with a loaded gun and a heart full of helpless rage. The gun swung again through the stale office air.

Brask backed away. He couldn’t take his eyes off the gun but he could hear – oh, thank God – Warde-Fowler’s footsteps retreating down the corridor.

‘Shut the door, Dmitry,’ he said. ‘Come in, shut the door – and we can talk.’

‘Not here,’ snarled Rakić, ‘to talk. Here’ – he shook the gun in Brask’s face – ‘for this.’

Brask’s face felt numb, his legs weak, his gut achingly hollow. How, he wondered, is a man like me supposed to face death? Without protest, without regret, knowing this is God’s plan? Am I meant to just accept it?

Maybe he would have, before. The last time Rakić was there, Brask hadn’t given a good goddamn for his own life, hadn’t cared whether he died or lived, hadn’t felt afraid, because – God forgive him – he couldn’t see how dying could be any worse than living in a world where Katerina was gone.

Things were different now. He’d stopped weeping, stopped regretting and second-guessing. Instead he’d started doing something. He was involved in the hunt for the killer now, deeply involved. DI Rose needed him – which meant Katerina needed him. It wasn’t much to live for, wasn’t much to fight for. But it was enough.

I do not accept it, he decided. I do not give up. He eyed the unwavering gun barrel.

He’d been playing at being a cop and he knew how a cop would fight: a straight right to the villain’s jaw, a decisive blow to knock the miscreant out cold. You’re not a cop, Matt, he thought. You’re a priest – or near enough. And you know there’s more than one way to fight.

‘Tell me about Katerina, Dmitry,’ he said, battling to keep his voice calm. Pretend it’s just a seminar with a student, he told himself. Just a chat over a cup of coffee. ‘You knew her better than I ever did.’

Rakić bared his teeth.

‘You did not know her.’

‘Tell me. Talk to me.’

Beneath his t-shirt, Rakić’s chest was heaving. His pale face was spotted with red.

‘What for? What point? Talking not bring her back.’

‘In a way,’ Brask said gently, ‘it might.’ He met Rakić’s rabid stare. ‘Remembrance is how we ensure that the people we lose never really leave us.’

He saw Rakić shift his grip on the butt of the gun.

‘I not lose Katerina. You took her.’

‘Someone took her. I don’t know who. It was a cruel and terrible thing to do.’

‘Then why?’ Rakić blinked. ‘Why? Tell me! Why take her, why take Katerina?’ He moved forwards and kicked the door closed behind him. He leaned his back against the door, as if exhausted, and maybe he was. The gun was still levelled at Brask, but it no longer seemed the focus of Rakić’s intent.

‘I can’t tell you why, Dmitry. I don’t know why.’

‘Katerina a saint. Never hurt anybody. Who would hurt her? Make her – suffer?’ His voice faltered. The gun bobbed. ‘She was perfect.’ He grimaced. Brask could see clearly the fierce battle Rakić was fighting with his emotions. ‘A perfect thing. For me, in my life. So much stupid, ugly, bang-bang, money, drug. And then – Katerina. A perfect thing.’ He looked at Brask. ‘When she go – nothing. For me, nothing.’

The Croat blinked again. But Brask saw that it wasn’t enough to keep back the tears. They glimmered in his pale eyelashes.

‘Tell me why.’ Dmitry jabbed the air with the gun.

Why? Countless men of God had spent lifetimes asking that question. Brask wondered if any of them had ever really found an answer.

‘Katerina,’ he said cautiously, ‘had great religious faith. Do you think God –’

The muscles of Rakić’s tattooed forearm tightened.

‘God! That govno jedno. Fuck him. Jebi ga. Fuck your God.’ Rakić’s brow was furrowed and beaded with sweat. ‘Katerina, she believe, good girl, good Christian. Always in the church. Always pray. And your God, he let this happen for her? To be killed? Crucify? Her head …’ He bit his lip. ‘Your God is a piece of shit.’

‘Dmitry, I know –’

‘You know nothing.’ The gun wavered. Rakić rubbed his face with his free hand. ‘Katerina. This man now, his skin? Cut off? What is this?’ He looked Brask in the eye. The madness, Brask saw, had drained away. Now there was only the weariness, the dullness, the deadness of loss. ‘What sort of God?’ Rakić threw up his hands. ‘What sort of God, hey? What sort of world?’

Brask had no answer. No one did. He felt the nausea of an adrenaline crash climbing in his chest.

Sirens screamed, somewhere outside. Warde-Fowler’s doing, no doubt.

Rakić slumped on to the couch by the door. The hand that gripped the gun went limp at his side.

‘I love her,’ he said, wiping a thumb across one wet eye.

‘I know,’ said Brask.

One last flash of anger. ‘You? You don’t know. You …’ He tailed off. Gave a broken-down shrug. ‘Maybe you do. Whatever.’

‘I didn’t kill Katerina, Dmitry.’

The Croat looked at him appraisingly, his lively eyes narrowed. Rose was right, Brask thought. Not dumb. Razor-sharp – but hurting beyond all tolerance.

‘No,’ Rakić said at last. ‘No. Not you.’

‘Not me, Dmitry.’ Brask swallowed. Brushed his eye with his cuff. ‘I loved her too.’

Rakić dropped his gun. It thudded dully on the floor as the gangster’s face contorted. Brask saw his own pain reflected in the man’s tortured expression. He couldn’t bear it; he buried his own face in his hands, shoulders heaving.

Neither of them moved when a loud knock rattled the door. At the third knock Brask called out hoarsely: ‘It’s okay.’

The handle turned and DI Lauren Rose stepped cautiously into the room. Looked curiously at the two men. We must look like we’ve been having a therapy session, Brask thought.

‘You all right?’ she barked at him.

He smiled sadly.

‘I will be,’ he said.