Chapters (58)
- Cover
- Also by Oliver Harris
- ONE
- TWO
- THREE
- FOUR
- FIVE
- SIX
- SEVEN
- EIGHT
- NINE
- TEN
- ELEVEN
- TWELVE
- THIRTEEN
- FOURTEEN
- FIFTEEN
- SIXTEEN
- SEVENTEEN
- EIGHTEEN
- NINETEEN
- TWENTY
- TWENTY-ONE
- TWENTY-TWO
- TWENTY-THREE
- TWENTY-FOUR
- TWENTY-FIVE
- TWENTY-SIX
- TWENTY-SEVEN
- TWENTY-EIGHT
- TWENTY-NINE
- THIRTY
- THIRTY-ONE
- THIRTY-TWO
- THIRTY-THREE
- THIRTY-FOUR
- THIRTY-FIVE
- THIRTY-SIX
- THIRTY-SEVEN
- THIRTY-EIGHT
- THIRTY-NINE
- FORTY
- FORTY-ONE
- FORTY-TWO
- FORTY-THREE
- FORTY-FOUR
- FORTY-FIVE
- FORTY-SIX
- FORTY-SEVEN
- FORTY-EIGHT
- FORTY-NINE
- FIFTY
- FIFTY-ONE
- FIFTY-TWO
- FIFTY-THREE
- FIFTY-FOUR
- FIFTY-FIVE
- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
What was Joanna doing here two months ago? According to Walker, she’d been in the country six weeks. I asked Reza to get any more details he could, studied the image again. Well away from Astana, by the looks of it. I thought of what Shomko had told me: There’s a possibility she headed east. She had connections there.
I tried to call Stevenson but he didn’t pick up. In the hotel’s business suite, I printed off a story by the writer Aliya Savinova had recommended. I pulled the chair away from the centre of my hotel room so I’d see anyone entering a second before they saw me. Then I removed the handgun from the safe, cleaned it, oiled it, rested it on the arm of the chair.
THIRTY-FIVE
I woke up in the chair, listening for the layered sirens of an attack. The city was silent. It was 6 a.m. No smoke on the horizon, just the steam rising out of the top of Khan Shatyr.
I checked jihadi sites, then social media, then global news. Cellophane-wrapped flowers piled high outside the Sunshine mall. The first victims had been named, photographs of them placed alongside candles and rosary beads.
No news of any man found shot in Astana. No news of an English woman missing.
I studied the eco-activists’ photo of Joanna again, partly kidding myself I could derive more clues from it, partly because she looked happy in the photo, and I hadn’t seen her like that for a while.
Lucy Piper messaged: she’d pick me up for a breakfast meeting at eight, heading to a restaurant on Nurzhol Boulevard.
‘Is Callum going to be there?’ I asked.
‘He’s on his way. Why?’
‘Just checking.’
I messaged Stefan and suggested that it was a good time to recce the Vectis office. He confirmed intent.
Aliya Savinova’s story had fallen to the floor. I picked it up and thought about what I’d read the previous night. It was well written. A lonely woman fears she is going mad; she contemplates the way in which we believe in unreal things when real things cease to help us, ‘when a limit is reached and only darkness lies ahead’. Lost in fantasy, she succumbs to an ill-judged relationship. The writer’s name was given as Salima Qupiya. In Kazakh, qupiya meant secret or mystery. There were few traces of her online; a poem in an Almaty magazine, a reference on a literary website from two years ago. No photos. According to a biog, she was the same age as Aliya Savinova. She wrote with Aliya’s laconic scepticism. Began studying at Nazarbayev University, it seemed, when Aliya did.
Piper picked me up in a chauffeur-driven Bentley. We drove fast. There were cars sticking close behind us.