Author's note: Disclaimers etc see chapter one. Thanks for your patience, next bit coming soon.

Back in the interrogation room

"Why did you run?"

"Because I didn't want to spend a lifetime in a German jail for a murder I didn't commit."

"But why? You said yourself, you still had contacts, people who –"

"I fled the scene, Alex. Think about it. Fibres, hair, fingerprints – all mine."

"And your gun."

"I didn't find that out until later."

"Metcalfe was pretty thorough."

"He was."

"So…Austria."

"Austria."

13. Austria – Graz. 1986

It was tiny, a basement squat really. Bed, table, chair, dresser, and one window where he could see people's feet tramping past in the morning. Rising damp.

The money hadn't lasted long, it was really just enough to get the rudimentary papers he required. Under the counter stuff. Meet a guy, who knows another guy, who knows a friend who can do the business. Don't ask too many questions, and don't answer any in return. It felt grubby, but the documents looked pretty real, so that was something.

He still had to feed himself though, and the city was a better place to hide than in the countryside, where everyone knew everyone else, and the arrival of a strange car or a new individual was always a matter of public notice.

He got a job in a public hospital, in the morgue – mostly heavy lifting, and getting rid of medical waste in the huge disposal fires downstairs. After his first few unsupervised trips, he took a look around to make sure no one was checking, and then threw his army ID and his old personal papers into the fire. Gellen Boromin crisped up quickly and disappeared in a puff of ash.

It made him think about Metcalfe, disappearing into the flurries of snow.

He thought a lot – about that, about plenty of things. He was always surprising himself. Just when he felt that he'd conquered the anger, the frustration, the sense of injustice and unfairness, something would happen or a thought would come, and the feelings would come flooding up again – hot, spurting, bitter. And then the resultant hopelessness, the depression. Sometimes getting out of bed was hard beyond belief. Sometimes he felt like he was being smothered, like he was gasping, clawing for air. Being in the basement probably made it worse.

He thought about his mother then. Two people in the family now, he reflected. Two life sentences. He wondered sometimes whether he should just go back, if jail could really be any worse.

He succumbed, and phoned his father in September. The old man's gasp of recognition over the phone nearly killed him.

"You're…you're mistaken, sir. My name is Kurt Lehrman."

And the old man cottoned-on pretty quickly. They spoke in short sentences, terse voices full of underlying meaning. He asked about 'state-side assets', and heard that they were being well looked after. Finally his father asked if Mr. Lehrman needed any help with the Austrian account, and he almost said no, he felt so ashamed, until he realized that this was the only way his father could reach out and comfort him now, so he mumbled the number into the phone. Their last words were clipped, business-like goodbyes full of forced genial cheerfulness that spoke nothing of the agonies of unvoiced care and cautions.

Three weeks later, he goes in to do a nightshift, punching his card and nodding at the technicians, and finds one of the dogsbody interns opening up the freezer trays. The casual invasion of the privacy of the dead rarely unsettles him anymore.

"What's the matter? You guys upstairs forget something?"

The intern is checking a toetag.

"Nah. It's some police procedural thing, they want all the John Does checked for a description match."

He extends a hand for the intern's clipboard and his fingers barely tremble.

"Let me see. Maybe I can help."

A long glance down the description list, then he passes it back with a shrug.

"Well, we've only got one guy over six foot, but I don't think he's a match. Sandy hair, blue eyes. Sorry."

The intern makes an expression somewhere between a grin and a grimace.

"Oh well – spares me the paperwork, anyway. Thanks."

"No problem."

With a cordial smile, he goes to the nearest disposal bin, picks up the yellow waste bag and gives the neck a twist, then heads out of the morgue. Nods to the nightguard at the door then pushes the bag on the trolley around the corner and into the janitor's room. Leaves, and walks quickly out the glass doors of the hospital. Pulls off his white attendee's coat and stuffs it into a dumpster. Walks towards the street with the bus-stop briskly.

Never looks back.

Interrogation room again

"Did your father's phone call make you miss home?"

"Not really. Kind of. I hadn't thought of the Ukraine as home for a long time."

"Then why go back?"

"I don't really know. Maybe I did miss home."

"But you didn't contact any of your relatives…"

"No. Too risky. I figured that it was a place I knew. I felt like…I needed to get my bearings."

"So did it help?"

"Not really."

14. Ukraine. 1988

"Karol?"

Her voice is sleepy. It's still too early in the morning, and the sun is barely up. He likes watching it come up. Rise and fall. Rise and fall. A steady soothing rhythm – the world turns, life goes on, millions of people go about their day-to-day. No alarm bells sound, no sirens go off, no lights flash, and he can get up, and work, and sweat, and wash, and eat, and fall into bed tired, and hardly dream at all.

Sometimes, in the winter, he sees dark figures retreating in the snow. Or blood on his face in the mirror. Or grey undertones in the lamplight, in the early morning.

But not today.

Today will be warm and clear, after the frosts retreat, and he'll be wearing loose shirts and gloves – probably working the tractor, maybe some hand-ploughing in the outer fields where there's more rock. He's been working itinerant short-term stuff for over a year and it seems to suit. Keeping things simple. No bank accounts, no tax returns, no paperwork. Cash in hand, from the industrial areas of Donetsk to here. Five hundred kopiykas equals five hyrvna equals one US dollar.

That's a problem. He keeps converting into US dollars. He's tried to stop himself, but it's an automatic mental calculation.

"Karol?"

"Yeah…"

He's distracted by the light coming up over the mountains. Beautiful.

"Come back to bed, Karol."

He turns his head to look at her, and feels his face soften. More beauty. She has long straight auburn hair, and he can see the strands pooling on the pillow in the half-light.

"I'm coming."

He smiles at her, her slender shape limned under the blankets, when it suddenly hits him. The realization freezes his expression – his smile stays fixed, but his eyes begin blinking, losing focus.

You can never marry. Never settle. Never have a family, a steady job, a career, an intellectual life. Never lose this sense of insecurity. This need to stay moving, this fear, this anger, this constant instability. You may talk yourself into a feeling of contentment, but never be truly free. And anyone who enters into this life with you will end up as imprisoned and unsafe as you yourself feel.

"I…I'm coming."

He looks back at the emerging sun, and his whole body feels dulled, leaden. It's a one-hundred-and-eighty-degree moment. And he thinks that this entire time he thought he was being smart, playing it well, when in fact he was stupid, stupid.

This is never going to let up. This is never going to leave me alone.

And he's been living in a dream world, where he could stay under the radar and start afresh, but he's been a fucking idiot, and he's lost nearly two more years off his life, his real life. Two more years wasted – four years in total.

He closes his eyes and thinks about the money he's got stashed away, and makes a quick conversion into US dollars. And then he thinks about what he'll need – clothes, shoes, other window-dressing stuff – plus the paperwork. He'll need to go to the Netherlands for that. And where to start. He's not sure.

There's not much time left then, so he goes back to bed, slides back under the blankets to touch, for the last time, the woman he's almost let himself fall in love with.