‘Do you want me to help you inside?’ Elise asked.

Jackie shook her head, then turned and showed us her back. As we watched her walk up to her front door my phone binged again. A message from Agnieska:

Don’t even think about coming home. All locks have been changed.

fifteen

ELISE READ THE text on my phone. Because I showed it to her. I also told her about the call I’d received earlier from Todor.

‘How did he know about you driving me?’

‘No damn idea. He must have his spies.’

‘Or, worse yet, he knows the people who bombed us.’

‘That’s a big accusation.’

‘I am just making an assumption. Why else would he be aware of all this?’

I had no answer to that question. But I did want to see right now if Agnieska had made good on her threat and changed the locks.

‘I’m going to drop you off and head back home and see how big the mess is,’ I said, ‘and what I am facing into.’

‘Let me come with you,’ she said.

‘Why?’

‘Because I think it’s often best, in a terrible situation, to have someone there to be behind you.’

‘You’re going to throw a punch at the priest?’

She smiled.

‘I’d like to,’ she said. ‘Even if he doesn’t have contacts among the terrorists who firebombed us, he still deserves to be slapped around for the way he threatened you.’

I wanted to laugh. Laughter just wasn’t there right now.

‘If my wife sees you …’

‘It won’t be the first time I have come up against “the other side”. Not that I like to think of them that way. So … can I please accompany you on the drive back to your house?’

Truth be told: I didn’t want to confront all that alone. But I knew that if I called Klara and told her what had gone down she would have come roaring over to the house ready for a major battle with her mother … and then she might just take on Todor …

‘Okay,’ I said to Elise, ‘you can come along. But if it turns crazy –’

‘I’ll be able to handle myself.’

Of that I had no doubt.

‘Let me sit with you in the front seat,’ she said.

I nodded. She got out the back and came in through the front passenger door.

I turned the key and the engine fired into life.

‘If the police stop me and see the Uber sticker and the cracked screen …’

‘I will tell them: I am your aunt and you are taking me home while off-duty. I want to also tell you: while in the clinic I made a call to the head of our group and explained all that went down and how heroic you were.’

‘I was hardly heroic.’