Found Wanting (35 page)

The bullet struck his leading foot. He fell as if tripped, pain slashing up through his leg. He hit the snow and, glancing down, saw blood welling from his ankle. He heard another shot. There was a distant cry, at once cut off. He tried to rise. The side wall of the log-store was only a few feet away. But the ankle would bear no weight. His shriek of agony was so immediate that it seemed to come from someone else. He fell again and started crawling forward.

‘He’s down,’ Aksden shouted from the far side of the chalet. ‘Stay where you are while I check.’

Eusden reached the corner of the log-store and propped himself up against it. He was panting for breath. His lower leg felt hot from the blood leaking out of him. There was a trail of it in the snow behind him. He saw Aksden striding across the meadow towards the trees, clutching the rifle in front to him. There was a slumped figure by one of the maples. Aksden had got his man.

Aksden slowed as he approached his victim and stopped a few yards from him. He raised the rifle to his shoulder, took steady aim and fired. The figure jerked from the impact. Then Aksden stepped forward, pushed the sniper’s rifle clear of him with his foot and stooped to pick it up.

He started walking slowly towards Eusden. A minute or so passed. Then he called out. ‘Did he hit you?’

‘Yes,’ Eusden shouted back. ‘My ankle.’

‘Too bad. I guess you won’t be able to walk.’ Aksden was moving more slowly with every stride. ‘Or run.’ He stopped, laid his rifle carefully on the ground and grasped the sniper’s weapon in both hands.

‘What are you doing?’

‘What I have to, Eusden. This way it will look like he finished you before I finished him.’

‘Don’t come any closer.’ Eusden pulled the gun from his pocket and pointed it. He wondered if the tremor in his hand was caused by fear or weakness – and whether Aksden could see it from where he was.

‘I don’t need to be closer. I can kill you from here.’

‘Drop the rifle or I’ll shoot.’

‘Fine. Shoot. You’ll miss. But go ahead anyway. Prove me right.’

He
was
right. Eusden knew that. He also knew that once he started firing, Aksden would not hesitate to respond. He lowered the gun. ‘Wait,’ he shouted.

‘What for?’

‘There are things you need to know.’

‘True, my friend. But I doubt you can tell me any of them.’

‘What’s your brother doing in Helsinki?’

‘Lars isn’t in Helsinki.’

‘Yes, he is. I saw him there yesterday with my own eyes.’

‘You’re lying.’

‘No. He was there. He followed Koskinen and me to Matalainen’s office. Didn’t Lund mention that? I certainly told him. I’ll tell you what I think, shall I? I think Lars was doing what you accused Pernille of: trying to get his hands on the letters. You haven’t shared the secret with him, have you? Not all of it, anyway. You guard it jealously. Even from your own family. Why is that, Tolmar? Why can’t you bring yourself to trust them?’

‘My family is none of your concern, Eusden. Prying into our affairs is why you’re going to die here in the snow, a long way from home.’

‘Kill me and you’ll be making a big mistake.’

‘And you’re going to explain why, of course.’

Yes. He was. He had to. His brain raced to fill the gaps between what he knew and what he needed to guess – correctly. ‘Do you really believe your father was the Tsarevich, Tolmar? I mean,
really
? I think you do. I think you’ve always wanted to believe it. That’s why you’re carving out a business empire in Russia. To make up for the real empire you reckon was your birthright. I imagine that information would come as an unpleasant surprise to your new friends over there. Of course, it could all be bullshit, couldn’t it? Who did Karl Wanting find in Siberia? A haemophiliac peasant with a passing resemblance to Alexei? A lie for him and Paavo Falenius to sell to your family so they could help themselves – and ultimately you – to the Tsar’s money? Or was your father the real thing – the one true Alexei? He must have told you.’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘He didn’t, did he? That’s it. That’s your problem. He never said. You were too young when he died. Your grandfather didn’t let you into the family secret until years later. Maybe he waited until Paavo Falenius was dead too. Wanting was long gone, of course. But your grandfather only knew what they wanted him to know – and to believe. It’s not the same as certainty. Rock solid certainty. One way or the other. Well, I can give you that if you want it. If you have the guts to face it.’

‘
You
can give me that?’ Aksden’s question was an admission of weakness. Eusden had found a way under his defences.

‘Not everything was destroyed in the explosion. Brad kept back one item to sell later to the highest bidder. What else would you expect? The guy was a scumbag.’

‘What item?’

‘Two sets of fingerprints, taken by Clem Hewitson sixteen years apart. The first aboard the imperial yacht off Cowes in August 1909. The second at Aksdenhøj in October 1925. They prove – once and for all – whether your father was the Tsarevich. If he was, the two sets have to match. If not . . .’

Aksden raised the rifle to his shoulder. ‘Where are they?’

‘One set’s in my pocket. The other’s in a safe at the Grand Marina Hotel in Helsinki, accessible only to me.’

‘Show me what you have.’

Eusden took out the envelope and held it up. ‘You won’t be able to see the insignia from there, Tolmar, so I’ll tell you what it is: the double-headed eagle of the Romanovs. Want a closer look?’

‘Throw your gun away.’

‘OK.’ Eusden tossed the pistol into the snow a few feet from him. ‘Now what?’

‘Don’t move.’

Aksden walked slowly towards him, the rifle held in front of him. The expression on his face was intent and watchful. But something else burned in his gaze. It was more than curiosity, more than desire for certainty. It was obsession.

He stopped a yard or so short and levelled the rifle at Eusden. He looked at the double-headed eagle for a second, then said, ‘Show me what’s in the envelope.’

Eusden fingered up the flap, slid out the sheet of paper and turned it for Aksden to see. There was an intake of breath. Aksden stared at the red-inked fingerprints and the writing beneath them:
A.N. 4 viii ’09
.

‘A.N.,’ he murmured. ‘Alexei Nikolaievich.’

The rifle was still pointing at Eusden, but Aksden’s attention was fixed on the letter, held out to one side. It was the opportunity Eusden had gambled on getting. It was, in truth, his only chance. He slid forward, swivelled on his hip and lashed out with his uninjured foot. The Dane cried out and fell backwards as his leg was whipped from under him. The rifle went off, but the shot flew harmlessly skywards. As Aksden landed on his back with a thump, Eusden rolled the other way and lunged for the gun. The pain in his ankle counted for nothing now. He grabbed the gun, pushed himself up and turned in the same instant.

But Aksden was already sitting up himself, his eyes blazing, his mouth twisted in fury. He swung the rifle towards Eusden. His finger curled around the trigger. Eusden brought his arm down straight, in line with Aksden’s face. And there was a roar as both weapons fired.

FIFTY

The sky, stared at long enough, seemed to turn from grey to palest blue. And the silence, once the ears had adjusted, gave way to tiny stirrings of wind and the distant cawing of crows somewhere in the forest. Only the gnawing chill of the air above and the snow beneath stirred Eusden from his reverie, which could have lasted several seconds or many minutes – he had no way of knowing. When he tried to sit up, the pain in his right side was sharp and deep. Blood had soaked through his jacket. He could not tell how serious this second wound was. But he was certainly alive. At least, he thought he was.

He propped himself up on his elbows and saw Tolmar Aksden’s body lying a few feet away, the rifle across his chest, one hand still clutching the butt. His expression was a frozen mixture of anger and surprise. There was a sickeningly neat bullet-hole above his left eyebrow and blood on the snow behind his head.

Eusden felt weak, light-headed and curiously contented. Nothing he saw or felt was entirely real to him. He assumed this was some kind of trick being played on him by his brain, a defence mechanism designed to ease the onset of death. It did not dull the pain he was in, but somehow divorced it from him, as if he was watching himself from a place of warmth and safety and disinterested ease. It made the idea of lying back down and continuing to stare at the sky very appealing.

‘
Don’t lie down, Coningsby
,’ said Marty.

The voice seemed to come from behind him. When he turned his head, there was no one there. Yet he had the sense that someone had been. It was like the quivering of a leaf after a creature has fled into undergrowth: a sign without a sighting.

‘This is all your fault,’ Eusden said aloud. ‘You know that, Marty, don’t you?’ There was no rancour in his tone. It was more in the way of a friendly reproach. ‘Thanks for landing me in it. One last time.’

‘
Don’t lie down, Coningsby
.’

‘What do you expect me to do?’

‘
Deliver a touching eulogy at my funeral
.’

‘And for that I need to be there, of course.’

‘
It’s customary
.’

‘Yeah. So it is.’

Eusden tried to sit up. There was a jab of pain in his side. The bullet had probably smashed a rib. What other damage it might have done he did not care to consider. Certainly standing up did not seem to be an option. He could not phone for help. He was closer to the jammer now than when he had failed to get a signal on the veranda. Theoretically, he could drive to where help might be found if he could make it to the Bentley. He had the key in his pocket. But theory was a long way from practice. Moving presented itself to his mind as a task best deferred, while another part of his mind insisted that deferral would be fatal.

He straightened his arms. It was like plunging into an ice-cold bath. He began to shiver and noticed the sheet of paper with the fingerprints on it lying close to his hand, beside the fallen gun. There they were: the unique traces of a human’s existence on this planet.
A.N
. Anastasia Nikolaievna. Or Alexei Nikolaievich. ‘Or A.N. bloody Other, Clem, eh?’

‘
You’ve been checking up on me, boy? Well, we’ll make a detective of you yet
.’

‘Seems you’ve succeeded. Much good that it’s done me.’

Eusden remembered asking Clem once how he had survived four years in the trenches without being killed or injured. And now he heard again the answer the old man had given him. ‘
You had to think ahead to survive, boy. If you didn’t, you were finished.’
(Pause for puff on pipe.)
‘’Course, if you thought too far ahead, you were finished as well.’
(Another puff.)
‘I used to reckon five minutes was just about right
.’

‘Five minutes? OK, Clem. I’ll try it.’ Eusden grabbed the sheet of paper, folded it as best he could and thrust it into his trouser pocket. The gun he left where it was. He rolled on to his hip and began to work his way towards the Bentley, sawing at the snow with his functioning leg. His shivering became a wild juddering, his breathing a panting wheeze. Pain ballooned inside him. But he did not stop. He felt suddenly and preposterously hot. Sweat started out of him. But still he did not stop.

He reached the car and rewarded himself with a few moments’ rest. The pain ebbed. Then he stretched up to open the door. He managed to do so by about an inch. Pulling it fully open seemed impossible. It felt immensely heavy. He pressed himself close to the side of the car, forced his arm inside the door and pushed with all his failing strength. It was just enough.

An unmeasurable segment of time passed while he rested his chin on the soft leather of the driver’s seat and contemplated, as if it were some abstruse problem he had no personal stake in, the difficulty of levering himself into the car. In the end, no easy answer presented itself. He counted down from ten to one and, after two false starts, simply hauled himself in, gripping the steering-wheel like grim death, an expression he felt in a moment of startling clarity he fully understood for the first time.

He lifted his injured leg in after him, and then nearly fell back out of the car as he pulled the door shut. The warmth that had built up during the drive from Helsinki folded itself round him like a duvet. It would have been easy, so very easy, to surrender to it and fall asleep. But he knew, if he did, he would never wake. He pushed the key into the ignition and turned it. The engine responded with well-tuned vigour. He shifted the stick into drive and eased down the accelerator. The car started moving. He steered it in a slow, wide circle past the body of Arto Falenius, out over the meadow and back on to the track they had arrived by. Every ridge of compacted snow, every minor undulation, sent pain stabbing through his body. But the Bentley rolled softly with the bumps. He knew it could be a great deal worse. And he began to think that he really was going to get through this. He drove slowly along the track, away from the
mökki
and the bodies lying nearby, into the forest, towards the main road – and survival.

The Bentley essentially drove itself. All Eusden had to do was steer it. His concentration began to falter, his vision to blur. He wondered if dusk was setting in. There was a vagueness to the world beyond the windscreen, a fuzzying at the edges of his vision. The track wound ahead through the snow-stacked trees. He kept his foot on the accelerator, his hands on the wheel. He just needed to keep going. He just—

There was a jolt, a violent lurch. Suddenly, the Bentley was heading down a short slope straight into a mass of trees. He must have mistaken the line of the track somehow. He stamped down on the brake. The car skidded and slewed to the left. But there were as many trees waiting there as dead ahead. And the car slammed straight into one.