The tall fellow in the cap putting out the dustbins at the bottom of the building was Nwankwo, dressed in the cleaner’s ill-fitting blouson. Eventually he set off down Westbourne Grove, walking fast, crossing the road frequently, making sure he wasn’t being followed. There were too many smart boutiques and expensive health-food shops for the street to be truly bohemian; it was full of young people who looked like his students, but Nwankwo no longer had the costume or the job that connected him with them. He felt that the smell of rubbish was clinging to him. He noticed a fine church that had been partly converted into a boutique. The church had itself been converted, rather than converting others. Here people were beautiful, healthy, young and solvent – they were not praying about the future. He walked up to Notting Hill Gate station.
Half an hour later he saw them walking slowly towards him through the crowds. Lira had a brown wig beneath a hat, dark glasses and a man’s suit. She was holding Adit’s arm – he had returned from his mission, still in his Paul Smith jacket. “How do we look?” she had whispered before they set off. “Super-cool,” Félix had replied. He had stayed behind, gathering up his things, taking the computer and the CDs disguised as British pop music and was going back to Paris that evening. Lira clung onto Adit’s arm; he put his hand on hers as if they were old friends. They looked as though they were exchanging confidences.
“Anything ahead?” she asked.
“No, no,” he murmured.
“Am I walking straight?”
“You’re perfect, just stay beside me.”
“Anything unusual?” she asked again.
“Nothing.”
Lira’s mind was buzzing. It felt as though the buildings around her were pressing down on her head and each passing car almost seemed to touch her. All these massive shapes were enlarged by her fear, and closed in as though about to suffocate and crush her. She concentrated hard, listening carefully to the sounds of the crowd, to the footsteps, trying to measure distances in her head. Nwankwo waited for them to approach, they were not far away now. He suddenly noticed a car moving slowly along the street; it looked like the one that had been waiting outside Mark’s building and it appeared to be following them from a distance. He leapt forwards.
“Nwankwo?” Lira said as he got level with them.
“Yes, Lira, it’s me, we’ve been spotted, they’re following us. We’ll go into the Underground, we’ll have to walk fast, you must trust me.”
He took Lira’s arm now, and explained to the man whose clothes he was wearing that he should go, things were getting dangerous. Adit murmured his farewells and gently let go of Lira, who clutched onto Nwankwo. Neither of them turned around at the sound of squealing brakes behind them. They would never know that Adit had stepped in front of the car to slow it down. They went down into the Underground.
“Who’s after us, Nwankwo?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do they look like?”
“Brutes.”
“Brutes or cops?”
“They’re pretty similar sometimes, but I’d say these are brutes.”
Nwankwo looked at the signs, and hesitated. Circle Line, Central Line – it was a deep station, with escalators down to the platforms.
“Hang on to me, Lira. We’re going down an escalator.”
She was terrified of stairs, she had said so in the Oxford house. Each step seemed like a precipice. Nwankwo dragged her down, no time to stand still. The killer was bound to be right behind them now. He counted out loud for her: “One! Two! Three! Four!” Lira went down in step with him, each one a leap into the void. She dug her nails into Nwankwo’s skin, breathing heavily. The other passengers stood aside as they came down, embarrassed by the spectacle of this strange pair.
Nwankwo suddenly heard running footsteps in the passages and then complaints from people being jostled and pushed aside. The killer was nearby. They had to go deeper. There was a second escalator below the first and, gathering Lira up, Nwankwo said, “I’m going to carry you, Lira.” He swept her into his arms and threw himself down the stairs, begging the crowd to let him pass. There was a maze of corridors at the bottom and he put her down.
“Can you run, Lira? It’s not too crowded – just hold my hand tight. Run!”
Blind people never run, they walk. They hold a white stick, which they wave from side to side when they’re lost. But Lira ran. In her mind she could see herself running along the edge of the Neva, or along a platform to catch a train. Her brain supplied enough images to keep her legs moving.
Run, Lira, run! The little voice in her head kept saying it. Her hand was crushed in Nwankwo’s. He would say “Watch out, we’re turning right!” and they would turn. But the footsteps behind were growing closer – where had all the other people gone? It was as though they had deserted the station on purpose, leaving them to die. Nwankwo was going too fast, pulling Lira’s arm. She fell down, he picked her up, they set off again. But soon the man was there behind them, then in front of them. He had a gun stuck into his waistband.
“He’s armed,” Nwankwo murmured.
The man approached, his thumb on the handle of the gun. Lira recognized his voice, then his smell.
“Is that a gun in your pocket or are you just pleased to see me?” she suddenly said, in Russian.
The sentence had come out of nowhere, Nwankwo didn’t understand what she was saying. But the man did, and was not amused. He came forward – he’d teach the blind girl a lesson she’d never forget. Lira let him come, holding back Nwankwo, who wanted to intervene. The man was tall, she could sense that. He let her grab his arms, quite sure that he could easily flip her onto the ground. But Lira had another phrase in her mind now, from those happy days when all the fighting she did was at karate class on Tuesday nights with Tanya: “Girls, if you’re attacked in the street you’ve got one advantage. No one expects anything from you. You just need one surprise blow, and then you should just run.” One surprise blow – there! The man was close and Lira kicked her knee up hard. The man doubled up, Nwankwo grabbed the gun and hit the assassin on the back of the neck.
“Kill him!” Lira screamed.
She was now possessed with rage, rage for life and for death. She didn’t allow Nwankwo to hesitate. She was close enough to him to grab the gun, and she fired it at the lump by her feet. “One for the blind girl,” she said. “Now run!” Nwankwo shouted, seizing the gun again. The man lay bleeding and moaning on the ground, his cries echoed through the corridors. A second man was probably close behind. And the surveillance cameras were pointing down at them.
A train pulled in just as they reached the platform and they jumped in, using the crowd as cover while they discreetly removed cap, moustache and wig.
“Did I hit him?” Lira whispered.
“Yes, and you aimed well, you got him in the thigh. You didn’t kill him, but he won’t be moving for a while. What did you say to him?”
“Just a line from an old movie that my friend Tanya likes.”
Then they were silent. Nwankwo had not let go of Lira’s hand. They sat down. She was shaking, the fear was suddenly catching up on her, invading her whole body. She should have been paralysed back there in the passage, facing that man, but she hadn’t allowed her terror to surface. Nwankwo didn’t know what to say, except that he admired her. He looked up and down the carriage constantly, but everything appeared calm: just commuters with their own preoccupations, listening to music, reading, looking at puzzles. Each station was an ordeal, danger could reappear at any moment through the opening doors. The line on the Tube map was like a countdown for them. They were on the Central Line, they should have taken the yellow one, the Circle Line. They would have to change at Holborn onto the blue Piccadilly Line to St Pancras where their hotel was – just next to the station so that they could escape the next morning.