I wanted to turn around. I wanted to rub my face with ashes and scream at the sky. I wanted to do, say something, anything, that would change what was. The road pulled me onwards. I repeated the words we’d said. I imagined a life in which I had not run; in which she was not dead. But what’s gone is gone. And you can never go back. Trying to has cost many a man his head, his soul. Mine nearly included. The consequences of survival would be something I lived with for ever.

I flexed my fingers gripping the steering wheel through makeshift dressings I’d torn from my shirt. Only when I tasted the salt on my lips did I realize I was crying. I blinked hard and kept on keeping on. It was all I could think to do.

But it was slow going.

The further north I drove, the harder the snow fell. I estimated the drive at sixteen hours in decent conditions, adding four hours to account for the winter weather and another two on top to be safe. If I stayed in-country any longer than twenty-four hours, getting out would become almost impossible: no matter how ineffectual the Russian police were, a day was the most I’d have before they caught up with me. Steal more cars, and I risked tripping a wire where it counted. If the FSB got involved and joined the dots with the GRU, I’d be lucky to make it halfway to the Estonian border.

Even if Aleksandr Denisovich had already reported his car stolen, I doubted the police would make visiting him a priority. And it was unlikely that he or anyone else would bother to call the emergency services about the fire: the dilapidated priest’s house had been consumed entirely and there was no one to call an ambulance for – even if one was available to send. No, the real variable was old Polina Yurievna. I couldn’t count on it, but I’d have bet my last hundred rubles that she’d send the authorities on a wild goose chase. I was near enough kin. And Russians take blood very seriously indeed.

I kept my speed steady and my driving unremarkable. I didn’t want to give the police any excuse to pull me over. It wasn’t only a case of being identified: even a successfully negotiated routine stop would slow me down. Although there were hours of driving ahead, I knew that, in the end, every minute would count.