CHAPTER THREE
Grazyna Litavincuk could not focus her eye.
She swirled uncontrollably in an imagined mist of heavy steam, horribly disoriented, with hot pain streaking down some parts of her body while in others she could feel nothing.
Reasoning had disappeared, and her memory suffered such lapses that events of the last week seemed like an unbearable nightmare lasting a single day.
There were no gaps however, no pauses, no let up in the torment.
Somewhere from behind, or was it above or below, she didn’t know, there was a sound.
A groan.
A throaty rumble which rolled across the clouds of mist like empty oil drums across a concrete basement floor.
She could not decipher exactly where it came from. It reached her ears and filled her with dread. She had heard the sound many times before and knew what was to follow.
Her nightmare was to continue.
*
The call on her mobile was from a client she knew.
He was a lobbyist who ran his own office from Westminster. His accounts, he had told her, were a mixture of commercial operations, venture capital groups which required piloting around the British political scene, and a foreign government. There was also a human rights pressure group. He shuttled between London and Brussels and Strasbourg for meetings with Members of the European Parliament and Commission, and London and Geneva where the United Nations committees on human rights, the rights of the child, economic and social rights and so on met. When he flew out from Heathrow, he called Grazyna.
This time he was off to Geneva again where he was scheduled to meet a delegation of human rights activists pressing the human rights committee to strongly urge the British and Irish Governments to repeal what they saw as extremely draconian legislation on detention. He would be there for three days and then would return directly to London.
Grazyna was to meet the evening flight at Heathrow and take him to his St John’s Wood apartment which overlooked the underground railway station. It was a routine run for her.
The traffic to the airport was normal, the drive lasting around three quarters of an hour. Along the way they chatted about books, people they shared a vague common connection with, and Grazyna’s new plan for getting rich, the one to get her out from behind the wheel of the G registration Saab.
“Actually, there is quite a call for desktop printing and I have this friend who can set me up with all the equipment cheaply.” Grazyna faced forty-five degrees through the windscreen, keeping both eyes on the road ahead while at the same time turning in the direction of her passenger. She spoke with an urgency which suggested she had no need of air, that she did not have time for breathing. The words ran on from one into the next in what became an endless, breathless stream.
“Well, not cheap really,” she continued, “but a lot cheaper than I would have to pay without his help. I’ve known him for years and we used to work together when I was doing the advertising for the Guardian. He’s now really successful and drives around in a Merc 500. Or it might be a 600. Whatever. He’s done pretty well and he says he can get me started.”
Grazyna had no trace of an accent even if she did look like her Eastern European name. She was a little over five feet tall and weighed in around sixty eight kilos. A lot of it was in her thighs. When she met someone for the first time they drew on their recollection of Russian shot putters and the women who sat at the end of Moscow hotel corridors monitoring the comings and goings of foreign tourists. She looked the part. However, while her father was a burly Ukrainian he had left the country after the war in 1950 and been settled in Australia. That was where he met Grazyna’s mother and spent the next twenty-five years of his life working on the railway lines with a pick and shovel.
When he died, Grazyna felt it was time to leave. She flew straight to London and had not left, except for annual holidays to Spain, Portugal, France and once to Switzerland for an ill-fated romantic skiing trip. She had visited Australia only twice since she left, the last time to see to her mother’s funeral arrangements.
All of this her passenger knew, and more as well. They had become quite friendly over the last nine or ten months.
“Same flight this time,” she asked.
“Yes. It gets in around 7.15 I think. OK?”
Grazyna smiled. “OK. If there’s a problem I will let your wife know and arrange someone else to take the job. Either way, you’ll be met. Have a good trip.”
She watched him hoist his suit bag over his shoulder and disappear into the terminal. As she turned to check the traffic behind her, and began edging away from the kerb, there was a tap at the front passenger window.
She stopped abruptly.
*
Only snatches of this Grazyna recalled during the last six days.
She remembered she had been to the airport. She could not remember how things had happened after that. There was the knowledge that she had met someone, someone she could not place and whose face she could not recall. It might have been a man, a woman; she was not sure. Perhaps it was a man. She knew where she was now, even if she did not know how she got there.
Hell existed, and she was in Hell.
*
At the sound of the knocking on the car window Grazyna had braked sharply and turned. Looking through the glass was a man. He was not smiling but looked anxious, questioning, appealing. His nodded slightly.
Grazyna leant across the front seat and rolled down the window.
“Yes,” she said. “What do you want?”
“Are you a mini-cab?” asked the man.
“Yes,” repeated Grazyna.
“Are you going back into town? Can you give me a ride?” He was probably in his thirties, pleasant looking, dressed in a casual jacket and light beige trousers. His pale pink shirt and predominantly red tie were an excellent match. The arched eyebrows lowered and a smile of even teeth spread across his face. “You would save a life if you would.”
Normally Grazyna would not pick up a passenger without prior arrangement with the radio control centre. A journey to Heathrow would often involve a pickup for the return trip either from the air terminal or an address nearby. But this time, it had been a solo run.
“I am just going off,” Grazyna said through the window. “Where do you want to go to?”
“North London. Hampstead Garden Suburb.” The man suddenly squatted and looked pleadingly at Grazyna. “Please. I really would be grateful. I have to get home and the taxi queue is about a mile long.” He spread his open hands on the window sill.
Grazyna made her decision. “OK. I suppose I can. But if control calls and I have to pick up another ride along the way you might get home later than you think.”
The man smiled again, opened the rear door and tossed onto the back seat a brown leather travelling bag.
“Thanks,” he said as he slid into the seat next to Grazyna. “This is great. You don’t know how good this is.”
Grazyna eased into the traffic, and as she began a fast one sided conversation, she mentally added the fare and presumably a generous tip to her special bank account she had dubbed her Escape Fund.
She did not know this trip from Heathrow airport would be her last.