Pavel & I by Dan Vyleta Page B

my little dove, I’m looking for the boy. The street Arab that follows Pavel Richter around. Do you know whether he is home?’
    â€˜No.’
    â€˜Be a darling and go down and check. I’ll stay on the line.’
    Sonia put the phone down on the table and motioned for Anders to stay mum. She walked over to the door, opened and closed it, stood still for two or three minutes, her feet growing cold from lack of movement. Then she re-opened the door, closed it yet again, and walked back to the phone, her heels clicking on the wooden floor with every step.
    â€˜Richter’s door’s locked and nobody answers. What do you want with the boy?’
    â€˜Oh, he and I, we had ourselves a little talk this morning, and there’s something I forgot to ask. Shouldn’t have let him go, but you know how it is. Early mornings, and the brow creased with worries. We all make mistakes.’
    â€˜Yes. When are you coming back here?’
    â€˜That depends on how things develop, my darling. Did you know Pavel was out looking for Boyd White’s sweet little
belle
?’
    â€˜No, I didn’t. He just said he had things to do.’
    â€˜Well, he is. Don’t think he will find her, but I’m having an eye kept on him just in case. Perhaps it would be a good idea for you to spend the night with him. Find out what he knows.’
    She didn’t respond.
    â€˜Do you think,’ he asked sweetly, ‘that this could be arranged?’
    â€˜Of course. Whatever you want.’
    â€˜That’s my darling. I knew I could count on you.’ Sonia heard him blow her a kiss down the phone line and quickly hung up. When she looked up, the boy was watching her intently.
    â€˜You can’t have the coat,’ she told him abruptly. ‘He would recognize it and know you’d been with me.’
    She turned to fetch some gold earrings from the bedroom. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘Use these to get yourself a new coat. And stay away from here. Pavel’s being watched.’
    The boy nodded calmly and weighed the jewellery in his grubby fist. His eyes seemed old to her, his monkey face wrinkled.
    â€˜Eat something in the kitchen before you go, and warm yourself before the oven,’ she instructed him. ‘And one more thing: if the Colonel finds out you’ve got my earrings, I’ll tell him that you must have stolen them.’
    She turned her back on him then, sat down at the piano, and started playing scales. Sonia did not stop until she heard the door close behind him.

    The apartment was near Potsdamer Platz, close to the centre of the city where three of the sectors ran together into a point. The building dated from around the turn of the century, like so much of Berlin’s housing; five tall storeys organized around a communal courtyard. Pavel scanned the windows but it was impossible to see anything through the all-pervasive frost. He tried the front door and found it open. Before he disappeared inside, he turned around once, not knowing himself why, other than there was a faint feeling of illicitness about his snooping. He did not know what he was looking for, and hence saw nothing, just street-hawkers, going about their business, and a one-eyed man in a good coat tying his laces by the side of the road. Pavel closed the door behind himself and ran his eyes across the names on the postboxes. There were none he recognized. He had forgotten to ask Franzi about Belle’s last name. Chances were she didn’t know it. He shrugged and began to climb the stairs.
    The soldier gave it away. Actually, he was a policeman, wearing the insignia of the Soviet-controlled police force upon collar and sleeve. Hesat on a chair on the fourth-floor landing, not looking up as Pavel walked first towards, then past him. He was smoking, and the floor around his feet was dotted with literally hundreds of cigarette butts. He – and no doubt some colleagues – must have been