I tried to take another step back, but I was stopped by the low stone parapet guarding against the steep drop on to the highway below. He drew a syringe from his coat. I put my hands into my pockets and glanced over the side, counting under my breath, calculating speed, distance. He was close enough now that I could smell his aftershave.

‘You see, I always thought we would meet here in Moscow.’ He removed the cap from the needle.

Now.

With one movement I brought both my hands up to his face, right thumb on the aerosol, left thumb sparking the flint of the lighter. A short burst of yellow-blue flame expanded into his eyes. He dropped the syringe, screaming. I bent over backwards, grabbing his wrist as I went, and let my feet go from under me. My spine arced over the wall, skimmed by a volley of shots. Avilov’s hip caught on the parapet. I held fast. The wound in my shoulder ripped further, the black coat billowed out above me. I let go.

One sickening second of freefall freedom.

And then the relief of contact as I slammed down, starfish-like, on to the stretched-out tarpaulin of a passing truck. A moment too late, Leonid Avilov fell clear of the bridge. I heard the dull thud of him hitting the asphalt and then the wet crunch of his skull flattening beneath the tyres of the truck behind.

My driver carried on, unchecked, and took a left on the Garden Ring. We were heading east. On the Eurostar platform in Kent I’d imagined a life in the mountains – a life of solitude and peace. I’d imagined I could escape. But I’d been alone and on the run since I was sixteen. I could disappear into the Eurasian steppe or the Great Northern Forest as easily and perfectly as a pebble would vanish into the Pacific. But I would never outrun myself. I knew then, as the wind lashed my face, that Rachel had been lost to me the moment I’d turned my back on who I really was. As I hung on to the truck, I let go of the idea of her – and understood, finally, that it was not Rachel that I’d been trying to save all along, but myself.

And I knew then that there was only one place left for me to go.

Home.

31

‘What do you want?’

The old lady spoke in a barely audible whisper behind the thick panels of a heavy wooden door. It was difficult to make out what she was saying. I looked around. It was snowing hard now. Large silent flakes filled the air, burying deeper the steps that climbed up to the entrance of my mother’s old house. I put my ear to the lock and raised my voice.