‘Thank you,’ I said, slipping it into the makeshift scabbard and then tucking it away in the back of my jeans. It sat comfortably in the spot where I usually carried my pistol.

I turned back to the image of the enigmatic little girl playing behind the rusted pelmet of the Iron Curtain. It was the only photograph of her I had.

‘She kept that smile her whole life, you know. I never could tell what she was thinking.’

‘They said she was a spy. Is that true?’

I zipped the photograph into my inside jacket pocket. ‘Who,’ I asked, ‘said that?’

‘Everyone. After she went to England.’

‘Ireland,’ I corrected her.

‘Yes, there. Everyone said she must have been a British spy. How else could she have …’ She looked around the room, at the worn wood panelling and sparse old-fashioned furniture, searching for the right word, ‘escaped?’

‘My mother wasn’t a British spy,’ I reassured her. ‘Of that, I am one hundred per cent certain.’

‘The woman who came here at Christmas said the same thing.’ She poured two more glasses of vodka.

‘This Christmas?’ I asked. ‘In December?’

She looked at me as if I was a simpleton.

‘Anastasia brought you up speaking Russian, but she didn’t bring you up in the Church, did she?’ I shook my head. ‘January the seventh. Our Christmas.’

‘But that was less than two weeks ago.’

‘No, it was the sixth. I remember, because Aleksandr Denisovich brought me some fresh logs in his new car … or … No, that was the day before. It’s very nice, his car. His brother bought it …’

‘Polina Yurievna,’ I interrupted her, ‘what woman?’

‘Rakhil,’ she said. ‘It’s a lovely name, isn’t it? And so unusual.’

My pulse quickened. I swallowed hard.

‘What did she look like, this “Rakhil”?’ Inside my chest my heart banged against bruised, burning ribs.

‘Black hair and green eyes.’ She looked at me and smiled. ‘And so beautiful. Are you sure you’re not in trouble, Maksimilian Ivanovich?’ She chuckled to herself and added: ‘Or that she’s not?’

Rakhil. It was as if she’d shot me between the eyes. Rachel. In Arkhangel. It was inconceivable.

‘And she’s here, still here, in this village?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘In your village.’ She smiled and held her arthritic fingers up for inspection. ‘I’m old, but I could still deliver one more of Arkhangel’s sons.’

I reached over and took her hands in mine, rubbing my thumb gently across her knuckles.

‘Trust me, Polina Yurievna,’ I said, struggling to keep my voice steady. ‘You already have.’

I steered clear of the path.