The driver reached mumbling behind the seat and pulled out a half-litre plastic bottle. There was some water left. Andrei took it to Maria. She opened the bottle and began to pour water in a pattern onto the ground.

The driver started up the engine. Andrei again raced back.

“I said wait!”

Maria headed towards the gate at the back of the alley, turned behind the post office and disappeared. It all happened in an instant. The fenced courtyard at the rear of the building was unlit and overgrown with bushes. Andrei couldn’t see where she’d gone. Only when he turned on his phone torch did he see a narrow gap in the fence, where one of the bars had been snapped. Somehow she had found it in the darkness. It wasn’t clear if there were any guards around. He climbed through the bars, loudly calling her name. No answer. There was an abandoned construction site, the grey skeleton of a building. He looked in every corner, anticipating he would find her sitting in some empty narrow corridor with the cat in her arms. She wasn’t anywhere. He prayed silently to God that she had just gone back to the bench. There was still a small chance she hadn’t gone out of her mind. He looked over the entire area then went back out onto the street. He swore: the car had left. What if the taxi had driven her away? Fuck. He retraced his steps and clambered through the bars, marvelling at how well this nutcase could play hide and seek. The flashlight’s beam roamed over the concrete walls and suddenly snagged on a figure in a doorway. Maria wordlessly approached him, took him by the hand and led him down to the basement. Shivering and holding onto Andrei, she pointed into the darkness.

Andrei pointed the flashlight where she was indicating. A large, long plastic bag, like a cocoon hung from a rusty metal hook. Maria shrieked and started back.

“Was this what you were on about?” said Andrei. He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t want to think about it. “That’s not a person. Not a body. Let’s go home. Please?” He wasn’t sure, but he didn’t want to think about it. He needed to get her out of there.

Glancing over her shoulder, as if afraid that she was being followed, Maria traced Andrei’s steps when her eye caught sight of a clamp fixed to a wooden table by one of the garages. She reached out to it and smiled playfully: “I need a coffee grinder.” She touched the handle.

Gently leading her away, Andrei marvelled at the comparison. In the darkness, with its handle sticking up, the vice really did look like an old coffee grinder. The likeness would never have occurred to him.