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  Rose Krisi was a little surprised to see such a combination of features on the girl’s face because John Avery looked as a typical American and Margaret Strasberg was a spitting image of Italians. Without even realising it, she started to scrutinize the face of the tanned little girl, pulling up the provocative newspaper almost to her nose. Suddenly her hands shook, her pupils sharply dilated, rounding the small, closely set eyes. Nervously half-whispering, Rose started to repeat a quiet, “No, no, no,” and only a spilled coffee, burning her legs, interrupted her mumbling and returned her back to her senses. Taking a better look at the picture of the child, trying to shift her mind from a dead point and remember the exact name of the town where her missing stepson was studying, she suddenly realised that, from the newspaper, a spitting image of Martin was looking at her, like two peas in a pod only smaller and light-skinned. Having calculated the age of the girl in her mind and estimated how long ago Martin Krisi went missing, she jumped from the chair and ran out of her room as if stung. She had only managed to press the button for the clerk before she left, throwing only one word his way in agitated and breaking voice, “Car!”

  “Wait, Pierre, I don’t understand, did Margaret ‘ave a baby?”

  “Excellent guess, Monsieur Schwartz!” The driver joked, sipping on his third pint of ale. “The ale is excellent,” he said, having licked his lips.

  “But ‘ow is that possible?”

  “That is the whole point, Monsieur Schwartz! I myself had absolutely no idea about it. Only after five years of knowing Margaret, I found out that she had a six-year-old child. The girl was also miraculously beautiful! Margaret, before she had opened her carpet store on the corner of Mardol Street and Bristol Avenue, took her to the town from which she had come, to her mother. Every weekend, the woman visited her daughter and supported her completely. It would have been hard for her to raise the child alone as the store started to gain momentum and the work, which rested on Margaret’s shoulders, would have been more than enough for three people.”

  Years later, when the woman became rich and moved to a bigger house, she moved them both to our town and took them under her wing. She settled the mother to live alone and the daughter lived with her.

  You can imagine my surprise, when one day, without me suspecting anything, Margaret sat in the car and suddenly said to me, “Pierre, from now on, your responsibilities will include something else. On the weekdays, you will take my daughter to school and you will pick her up in the evening. You have to drive her after you take me to work, and pick her up, naturally, earlier. Do not worry about payment. From now on, you will receive twice the amount of money for weekdays. I will introduce you on Monday. Her name is Eve Martina but you can call her Eve.”

  Chapter 14

  The paper was fresh, but the news was old. After coming to our town from London at five in the morning, Rose Krisi left the official limousine provided by the Zambian Embassy in London. She dismissed the bewildered driver and, after thanking him, assured him that he had nothing to worry about. She would personally call the embassy and sort everything out.

  It was just beginning to dawn and the woman, gasping with excitement, went into “The Grand Hotel International.”

  She paid for a suite on the twentieth floor, one of those suites with antique wide balconies and gilded balustrades that opened their magnificence straight to the courthouse.

  In six days, the seventh hearing on the case of Margaret Strasberg’s implication in murder would be held and the woman, who all this time was released on bail and under written instructions not to leave her place, would be taken in handcuffs right from the courthouse into temporary custody where she would have to spend two and a half weeks. However, at that moment, no one knew it yet and, while her fate hung suspended in the air, Margaret was home, waiting for the next hearing on her case.

  Some inexplicable force drew the dark-skinned woman to the defendant. She felt that the mystery of her stepson’s disappearance was somehow intertwined with Margaret’s life and John Avery’s murder.

  Having rented an old, non-descript ’75 Volkswagen, early in the morning, she drove up to the house situated alongside of The Salvation Square, and began to watch.

  Everything was quite... Normal. Margaret could not leave the house for a few days, which was proper for a devastated woman. Each morning, at exactly eight o’clock, Margaret’s front door would open and a young woman, shaking with the autumn chill, would step onto the porch, wrapped in a white robe and, clutching a mug of coffee in her hands, she would take the newspapers and go back into the house. Despite the short observation of the young woman, Rose Krisi could not help but notice her captivating beauty and stately grandeur. Each day, at exactly six o’clock in the evening, the lights would turn on in the house and they would go out at eleven. No one entered. No one departed.

  Four days of Rose Krisi’s unsuccessful surveillance passed in these tones until, on the fifth day, the woman, already desperate to find any clues, noticed a small figure dressed all in black who slipped as a shadow out of Margaret’s front door just after the lights went out. With the two sparks of her small black eyes and leaning slightly forward while tightly clutching the wheel in her hands, Rose was staring intently into the darkness and the shadow sliding around the pitch-black corners. At first, she did not believe that it was the same Margaret, comparing to the gorgeous Margaret she had seen in daylight. But the yellow light of the lantern, illuminating the face of the young woman who glanced back for a moment, convinced Rose that this shadow belonged to the person she sought. Only, what was she doing out of her house late at night? Having hidden herself, the woman began to watch.

  Margaret Strasberg quickly walked past her home, hiding in the thickness of trees planted around, and headed for her garage. After several minutes, the garage door rose and a red Volvo emerged. Rose did not know what the woman could possibly need in the dead of the night. “Perhaps,” she reasoned, “something has happened... And perhaps not,” her inner voice rang out, strictly ordering her to follow the young woman.

  Afraid of revealing herself, the stalker kept as far away as possible, never taking her eyes off the burning red and yellow lights of the red Volvo, which was leading her farther and farther away from the town. For a moment, Rose thought that the person sitting in the car had uncovered the surveillance and was now trying to bring the poor woman to some dark forest to get even with her. Adrenaline born from fear is prone to producing not only the nervous pleasure but also different, sometimes delusional ideas.

  After half an hour of continuous driving on the highway, Margaret’s car took a hardly noticeable left turn and briskly, as if she knew every hole, wound like a snake through the narrow unpaved country road.

  Before following the young woman farther, Rose stopped for a while in the shade of the trees on the roadside a bit father from the turn. Having gathered her strength and taken a deep breath, she started the engine again, turned the lights off and continued following Margaret. The suspect’s car, wiggling and dodging the bumps, was getting away on a narrow track passing in the middle of a huge field. The road led to the deep and blackened thicket of a dark coniferous forest. The frightened stalker locked all the doors and began to stare intently into the night. Awakening a vigilance in herself that was previously unknown to her, she tried as soon as possible to adapt to the absorbing pitch-blackness and to the imaginary sounds influenced by her fear. Only two small lights in the distance were the guidelines for the sneaking Rose.

  Although she was quite scared, the deeper she went into the forest the more she knew that her intuition had not failed her. There clearly was something fishy and she was bound to find out what.

  After driving several more kilometres on the mounds and bumps, Rose was surprised to find that the forest finally ended and the moonlit roofs of small houses opened up before her eyes. Apparently, it was a small village of some kind where almost no one lived. The light was on only in scattered windows and the lanterns on the streets
kept extinguished avaricious silence. Margaret’s car stopped at the very last, as though isolated house, which stood apart from all the other houses and was protected by a huge two-metre tall brick fence crowned with barbed wire. This did not seem strange to Rose because she knew that Margaret was fabulously rich. Certainly there were a lot of valuables and expensive things in the house, the disgrace of which was absolutely hidden behind the two-metre tall guardian.

  Having left the car in the shade of the trees, safely hiding it behind the fallen pine branches at the exact spot where the forest ended and the village began, Rose carefully opened the door and, with her knees half-bent, began sneaking towards the house, the gate door of which Margaret, merging with the darkness, was now opening. The young woman did not go inside. She only took two large packages from the red car parked nearby and disappeared behind the tall brick fence.

  Rose Krisi, for fear of missing something important, rushed with all haste to the ghostly house and ran as fast as the need to tread silently allowed her.

  Naturally, she could not enter through the gate. It would have exposed her right away. And what kind of a spy enters the suspect’s house through the front door? Despite the fact that Rose was already of advanced age, she was in great shape and the spirit of adventure seized her as if she were a little girl. You know, Monsieur Schwartz, the best scouts are those who have an immediate interest in the case. And she had it even though she did not fully realise it at the moment.

  Walking around the fence, two sides of which were opened directly to the forest and the third was spliced with a wooden homemade fence of the neighbours, the spy, having turned a corner, appeared on the narrow, half-a-metre-wide path that separated Margaret’s house from a small cottage. From the neighbour’s garden, huge, heavy branches of apple trees hung over that very path with several half-empty water tanks nearby. Rose had to do something and, spurred by time wasted in reconnaissance of the territory, she began to push those tanks to Margaret’s fence, which was faithfully and silently guarding something. She took off her thick-soled shoes and, assuring herself that she could do it, climbed on the improvised stool. It was just enough to raise herself on her toes and put both of her hands on the top of the structure though she had to strain her neck severely. However, it was enough for her eye level to overcome the line of the fence and the two sparks, burning with black flames, could now eagerly contemplate the yard opened before them.

  The very first thing that she saw was a small apple grove. To the left of the stalker there was a shed from which a path led to the house through the garden and away to the gate. Having oriented in the darkness, the woman began to watch, holding her breath and trying not to move. There was no one on the street nor inside the house. This seemed strange to Rose. Ten minutes passed but there were no signs of life in this desolate dull spot.

  Rose noticed how old and neglected the house was, another strange thing, which unsettled the woman. Her intuition screamed about impending trouble. “Why enclose such a small inconspicuous house with a tall, brick fence? Is it possible that Margaret went in and went to bed immediately without turning on the light? What if the lights here were generally turned off because not a single lantern was lit on the streets? What is she doing here in the middle of the night? Perhaps she was unable to sleep because the trial is the day after tomorrow?” A swarm of thoughts, similar to angry bees whose honey was taken away, buzzed in lurking Rose’s head, until after fifteen more minutes, the shed’s door creaked and a shadow merging with the darkness of the night appeared. The shadow crumpled two empty packages that resembled those from a grocery store, threw them near the path and hurried to the other end of the courtyard, slipping past the old house and her silhouette vanished behind the gate.

  A minute later, Rose, standing on her toes, heard the engine noise of a departing car. Margaret drove away. But why the hell would she need to bring some things here in the middle of the night?

  There was something amiss here and, climbing down from the barrels and stretching her stiff legs, Rose swore that she would do whatever it took to reveal the alluring secret of the woman in black.

  Chapter 15

  Rose returned to the hotel in the morning. After napping restlessly for a couple of hours, obsessed with the idea of exposing, essentially, an unknown woman, she called for the clerk. Having placed a thousand pounds in various banknotes on the table, she said in a semi-commanding voice, “You will get that money if you bring me two foldable ladders, three-metres long each and a small set of tools in an hour. Let there be a hammer, pliers, a picklock, a crowbar, screwdrivers and anything else that your male mind deems useful for... Opening something. An additional five hundred pounds if this stays between us.”

  In total, Rose named a figure equal to the young man’s two months’ salary, but seeing his widened eyes and opened mouth in surprise, she practically wished she had never made this offer, fearing that the clerk would not accept it due to his unwillingness to be implicated in dangerous business. But she was mistaken. Or rather, she was devilishly accurate in choosing that exact clerk.

  The young man had just started an honest service in the hotel, finally trying to mature, for the entire teenage period of his life he had spent on the streets breaking into stores and burgling expensive homes with his gang. Not once had he been caught but when all his “brothers” were arrested, he promised himself that he would stop for good. Savvy and intrigued, he just replied, “Do you want it delivered here or shall I take it straight to the car?”

  Delighted with such business pliancy of the boy, Rose quickly commanded, “To the car!”

  Everything was done in an hour. Closing the trunk of her rented Volkswagen, she distraughtly went over the things that were already inside of it. After making sure that everything was in place, the woman was about to leave when, suddenly, the excited clerk rushed to the car and, pitifully turning his begging eyes to Rose, quickly blurted out, “Madam, I have no idea where you are going but, I beg of you, take me with you!” The woman lurched from the unexpectedness and, to some extent, audacity. However, when the first shock passed, she figured she could use someone’s help and physical strength even more. After all, it was too risky to drive alone for a hundred kilometres away from the town, through forests and thickets, in order to reveal someone’s secret. The one who so carefully protects it will not allow any information on this account to leak into the masses, therefore, if she was caught, Rose risked never returning.

  “Get in,” she commanded sternly. “And put your seatbelt on,” she added in a maternal way.

  Upon arriving at the spot, the pair hid the car behind the branches of a fallen tree in the thicket. Looking around, they silently, with conspiratorial faces of intriguers, tottered on the path leading to Margaret’s country house.

  “Mark, we will not steal nor do anything illegal... Well, almost anything,” Rose began, stuttering. “I just want to look at something inside...”

  “Agreed, madam. Don’t worry, I am here at your service,” the clerk replied and his eyes lit up with venturesome lustre.

  The pair passed along the fence and turned left, reaching a narrow passageway, which separated Margaret’s house from the neighbour’s, the very same where the day before, Rose Krisi on her tiptoes had spied on unaware Margaret. The young man dragged two foldable iron ladders and the woman next to him carried a black sports bag. Having put one of the ladders to the fence, Mark climbed it and gave Rose a signal. Only gestures, no words. The pair did not talk. Engrossed in their business, with serious faces, they only rarely glanced at each other, giving certain signals. The boy took bolt cutters from his belt and cut the barbed wire so carefully that, after they had climbed the fence, it could be put back into place, creating the semblance of integrity. Then the young man threw the other ladder over the fence and, after getting across himself, he helped his companion over as well.

  He pulled the ladder over the fence and dragged it into the yard. Having masked the wire, the boy climbed down and
, busily shaking his hands, with fake indifference but obvious pride, looked at the woman as if this was “a piece of cake” for him.

  Stealthily, the pair started to move towards the shed, slowly sneaking through the apple grove.

  Having reached the shed, Mark opened the black sports bag from which he started carefully and somewhat lovingly taking out different items in turn. There were different kinds of screwdrivers, pliers, bolt cutters of different sizes, a set of picklocks, flat narrow iron plates, cylindrical thin bayonets and other unfamiliar things that Rose Krisi’s eyes had never seen before. She had no idea what each of those contraptions was for. There was a homemade shotgun amongst other things.

  “Why do we need that?!” The shocked woman asked while patiently standing by and curiously watching Mark carefully lay out these items on the black tarpaulin canvas spread out on the ground.

  “Just in case...” Replied Mark suddenly, becoming more serious and, having turned to the shed door, began to examine it.

  “Weeell...,” He spoke with knowledge on the matter, narrowing his eyes and estimating something in his mind, “this is a lever tumbler lock.”

  “Is that bad?” the woman asked, panicking from such complicated and unfamiliar words.

  “No, that’s easy-peasy,” said Mark, spat and stood up from his knees, remaining serious. Upon seeing Rose’s uncertain look, he added, “It is a lock that consists of levers.” After realising that was not enough, he took a deep breath and blurted out the information in such a way, as if he was learning the definition by heart every day and was now in an exam. “Levers are plates cut into specific shapes. The ridges on the key raise the levers into certain positions, which are necessary for opening the lock. In other words, it is like a valve which you have to put into the right position if you want to release its secret.”