underground book club issue 3

taking you on a literary journey

july 16th 2012 issue three

In THIS ISSUE...

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READ THE OPEnInG CHAPTERS InSIDE!

03July 16th 2012

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Andy BrownFounder of the Underground Book [email protected]

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Dear Reader,

Sadly this is the final issue for the summer. These first three issues have been our experiment to assess whether commuters are interested in reading good

literature on their journey, and you have answered us with a resounding yes. With the digital editions available on the iPad and online we have seen that there is demand for a curated selection of great stories to indulge in whether commuting or from the comfort of your homes.

Although most of us are excited to be having the world’s greatest sporting even take place in our Capital, those of us living and working in London will be all too aware of the impending extended travel time on tubes, trains and buses we are about to endure. With that in mind we hope to set you up in this issue with some really great books to keep you entertained during the Marathonesk delays that are sure to ensue over August.

We will be re-launching the magazine with a much larger coverage of London and the surrounding area in September. There will be some very exciting things happening for the Underground Book Club over the next couple of months that will definitely raise our profile, unfortunately I can’t reveal them here…. In fact I’m probably in a lot of trouble for even talking about not being able to talk about them! To find out more about us and keep up to date please sign up to our website or follow us through the various social media platforms available.

For those of you trying to get away for the Olympics or just looking forward to a good summer break abroad, check out our feature on page 18. We’ve considered what a few celebs may be packing in their suitcases on the sly before jet setting off to exotic locations, or in Princes Charles’ case… Wales. And that leaves me with nothing left to do, but take great pleasure in once again asking you to sit back and start a literary journey….

a lady cyclist’s guide to kashgarsuzanne Joinson (Page 6)

It is 1923 and Evangeline English, keen lady cyclist, arrives with her sister Lizzie at the ancient Silk Route city of Kashgar to help establish a Christian

mission. As they attempt to navigate their new home and are met with resistance and calamity, Eva commences work on her book, A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar...

In present-day London another story is beginning. Frieda, a young woman adrift in her own life, opens her front door one night to find a man sleeping on the landing. In the morning he is gone, leaving on the wall an exquisite drawing of a long-tailed bird and a line of Arabic script. A stunning debut peopled by unforgettable characters.

the laundry manken rijock (Page 20)

In 1980s Miami, Ken Rijock was the middle man between the Colombians and the domestic cartels flooding America’s streets with cocaine. Every Friday,

carrying hundreds of thousands of dollars in a tattered suitcase, he would fly by private jet to a tax haven in the Caribbean. Rijock’s operation was responsible for ‘cleaning’ over $200 million of dirty cash. And all the time he was in love with a cop.

It finally came crashing down when a client testified against him. He agreed go undercover for the DEA, and he now works with banks and governments to track the new generation of money launderers.

the child thiefdan smith (Page 28)

celebrity summer reads (Page 18)

The Underground Book Club delves into what books celebs will really be packing in their suitcases this summer.

December 1930, Ukraine. Luka is a war veteran who now wants only a quiet life with his family. His village has, so far, remained hidden from the

advancing Soviet brutality. But everything changes the day the stranger arrives, pulling a sled bearing a terrible cargo.

When the villagers’ fear turns deadly, they think they have saved themselves. But their anger has cursed them: when calm is restored, a little girl has vanished. Luka is the only man with the skills to find who could have stolen a child in these frozen lands - and besides, the missing girl is best friend to Luka’s daughter, and he swears he will find her.

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The UndergroUnd Book ClUB

ALady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar takes readers on a journey split between 1920s Kashgar, a city on the Silk Route, and present day

London. We see the world of Kashgar through the eyes of Evangeline, in the city to establish a Christian mission with her sister, Lizzie, and their leader, Millicent. As she takes notes for her book, A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar, Eva richly describes the resistance they meet in the city. Through her words, we share the experiences that will, ultimately, change her life. In modern day London, we follow the worlds of Frieda and Tayeb, two strangers whose search for meaning and escape brings them together. When their worlds collide, they form a touching friendship, an inexplicably strong bond born out of their need for someone to listen

and understand. As we follow both journeys, we learn of their pasts, their secrets, the dreams they have lost sight of.

In A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar, Joinson has created an intricate, beautiful story. Her delicate use of languages weaves a story that explores the meaning of belonging, inheritance and the search for a different life. In our three protagonists, we find flawed characters trying to escape their problems. They are individuals we can identify with, lost people searching for something more, the missing piece that will make them happy.

By the end of both stories, the reader understands the importance of companionship in achieving this. Joinson’s debut novel is a joy to read, full of subtle hints and hooks that make it impossible to put down.

a lady CyClisT’s gUide To kashgar

By Anna Powell

By Suzanne Joinson

‘A haunting, original and beautifully written tale that conveys a sense of profound alienation, and of other realities’

Paul Torday

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When their worlds collide, they form a touching friendship, an inexplicably strong bond born out of their need for someone to listen and understand.

A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar

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A Few Things to Remember: Study the country you are to travel and the road-surface, understand your map, know your route, its general direction, etc. Always observe the road you cover; keep a small note-book, and jot down everything of interest.

Maria E. Ward, Bicycling for Ladies, 1896

A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar – Notes

Kashgar, Eastern Turkestan. May 1st, 1923

I unhappily report that even Bicycling for Ladies WITH HINTS AS TO THE ART OF WHEELING – ADVICE TO BEGINNERS – DRESS – CARE OF THE BICYCLE

– MECHANICS – TRAINING – EXERCISES, ETC., ETC. cannot assist me in this current predicament: we find ourselves in a situation.

I may as well begin with the bones.They were scalded, sun-bleached, like tiny flutes and

I called out to the carter to stop. It was early evening; anxious to reach our destination we had travelled, in the English fashion, through the hottest part of the day. They were bird bones, piled in front of a tamarisk tree and I suppose my fate could be read from the pattern they made in the dust, if I only knew how to see it.

This was when I heard the cry. An unholy noise, coming from behind a gathering of dead poplar trunks whose presence did nothing to alleviate the desolate nature of this particular desert plain. I climbed down, looking behind me for Millicent and my sister, Elizabeth, but could see neither. Millicent prefers horseback to carts, it is easier for her to stop at will to smoke a Hatamen cigarette.

For five hours our path had descended through a dusty basin, its lowest part dotted with tamarisk trees emerging from mounds of blown soil and sand that had accumulated around their roots; and then, these dead poplars.

Twisted stems of grey-barked saksaul clustered between the trunks, and behind this bracken was a


girl on her knees, hunched forward and making an extraordinary noise, much like a bray. In no hurry, the carter joined me and together we stood watching her, he chewing on his splinter of wood – insolent and sly like all of his type – saying nothing. She looked up at us then. She was about ten or eleven years old with a belly as ripe as a Hami melon. The carter simply stared and before I could speak she fell forward, her face on to the ground, mouth open as if to eat the dust and continued her unnerving groans. Behind me I heard the crack of Millicent’s horse’s hooves on the loose-stoned pathway.

‘She’s about to give birth,’ I said, guessing.Millicent, our appointed leader, representative of the

Missionary Order of the Steadfast Face – our benefactress – took an age to extract herself from the saddle.

Hours of travelling had evidently stiffened her. Insects vibrated around us, drawn out by the slackening heat. I watched Millicent. Nothing could be a more incongruous sight in the desert than she, gracelessly dismounting, with her dominant nose cutting the air, and a large ruby ring on her hand at odds with the rest of her mannish dress.

‘So young, just a child.’Millicent bent down and whispered to the girl in

Turki. Whatever she said provoked a shout and then came terrible sobs.

‘It’s happening. We’ll need forceps I think.’Millicent instructed the carter to bring forward

the supply cart and began fumbling through our possessions, looking for the medical kit. As she did I saw that a group of women, men and children – a large family perhaps – were coming along the track towards us, pointing and nudging each other with astonishment at us foreign devils with hair like pig straw, standing as real as anything on their path. Millicent looked up at them, then used her preacher voice:

‘Stay back and give us room, please.’Clearly shocked at her accurate words, repeated in

both Chinese and Turki, they arranged themselves as if positioning for a photograph, only hushing when the girl in the dust leaned forward on hands and knees and screamed loud enough to kill trees.

‘Eva, support her, quickly.’The crying child, whose swollen stomach was an

abomination, looked to me like a dribbling wildcat and I did not want to touch her. None the less, kneeling in the dust in front of her, I pulled her head on to my knees and attempted to stroke her. I heard Millicent ask an elderly woman for help but the hag shrank away, as if contact with us would contaminate her. The wretched girl’s face buried against my legs, I felt a wetness from her mouth, possibly she tried to bite but then abruptly

she heaved away, back on to the ground. Millicent wrestled with her, turning her over on to her back. The girl let out pitiful cries.

‘Hold the head,’ Millicent said. I tried to hold her still as Millicent opened her knees and pushed them down with her elbows. The material around her groin came off easily.

My sister still had not arrived. She too prefers to travel by horseback so that she can go at whim into the desert to ‘photograph sand’. She believes that she can capture sight of Him in the grains and dunes. The burning sand will become a pool, the thirsty ground bubbling springs. In the haunts where jackals once lay, grass and reeds and papyrus will grow . . . These and other words she sings in the peculiar high voice she has acquired since being fully possessed with the forces of religion. I looked round for her, but it was futile. I can still hear those screams now, a hideous anguished noise, as Millicent pushed her finger into flesh, creating a space for the forceps until a combination of blood and some other liquid came out, streaking her wrist.

‘We should not do this,’ I said. ‘Let’s move her into the town instead, there must be someone more experienced than us.’

‘No time. All merciful Christ look upon us and preserve us,’ Millicent did not look at me, ‘thy servants, from fear and evil spirits, which hope to destroy the work of Thy hands.’

Forceps pushed in and a scream that was white-pitched murder.

‘Lord, alleviate the hardships of our pregnancy,’ Millicent said, tugging, pulling as she incanted, ‘and grant us the strength and fortitude to give birth and enable this with Thine all-powerful help.’

‘We should not do this,’ I repeated. The girl’s hair was damp and her eyes were panic-filled, like a horse in a thunderstorm. Millicent tipped her own head back so that her eye-glasses retreated along her nose. Then, with a quick movement, as if pulling up an anchor, a blue-red creature came slithering out along with a great swill of watery substance and was caught, like a fish, in Millicent’s hands. Blood from the young mother quickly formed a red crescent in the dust. Millicent put her knife to the umbilical cord.

Lizzie came then, Leica camera in hand, wearing our uniform of black satin trousers covered with a dark-blue silk skirt and a black Chinese cotton over-coat. Her skirt hem was blotted with the pink dust that engulfs everything here. She stood, staring at the scene before her like a lost girl at the edge of a fairground. ‘Lizzie, get water.’

Millicent’s knife separated for ever the baby from its mother who shuddered, her head lolling back as the

11July 16th 2012


fish-baby loudly demanded to be let into heaven. The crescent continued to grow.

‘She’s losing too much blood,’ Millicent said. The girl’s face had turned to the side; she no longer struggled.

‘What can we do?’Millicent began a soft prayer that I could not hear

very well beneath the cries of the baby.‘We should move her, find help,’ I said, but Millicent

did not respond. I watched her lift the mother’s hand. She shook her head, did not look up at me.

‘Millicent, no.’I spoke uselessly, but I could not believe it: a life

disappeared in front of us, down into the desert cracks, as simple as a shift in the clouds. Immediately, there was uproar from our gaping spectators.

‘What are they saying Lizzie?’ I shouted. Blood kept coming from between her legs, a hopeful tide looking for a shore. Lizzie stared at the red tracks on Millicent’s wrist.

‘They are saying we have killed this girl,’ she said, ‘and that we have stolen her heart to protect ourselves from the sandstorms.’

‘What?’ The faces in the crowd dared to come close to me, rushing against me, placing their hands with black nails on me. I pushed the hands away.

‘They say we have taken the girl to give ourselves strength, and that we plan to steal the baby and eat it.’ Lizzie spoke quickly, in that odd, high voice. Her ability with this impenetrable

Turki language is much better than mine.‘She died in childbirth, natural causes, as you can all

very well see,’ Millicent shouted uselessly in English, and then repeated it in Turki. Lizzie set about bringing water in our tankards and a blanket.

‘They are demanding that we are shot.’‘Nonsense.’ Millicent took the blanket from Lizzie

and they stood together; a lady and her handmaiden.‘Now, who’, Millicent held the screeching baby high

up as if it were a severed head, an offering, ‘will take this baby?’

There was not a sound from the disbelieving faces watching her.‘Who is responsible for this baby girl? Is there a relative?’

I knew already. No one wanted her. None of that crowd even looked at the girl in the dust, just a child herself, or at the blood becoming earth. Insects walked on her legs already. Lizzie held the blanket out and Millicent wrapped the furious, wailing scrap of bone and skin into a bundle. Without saying anything she handed it to me.

We were then ‘escorted’ by the family elder and his son to Kashgar’s city gates where, through whatever

magical form of communication, notice of our arrival had already been received. The Magistrates’ Court was open, despite it being early evening, and a Chinese official brought in, because, although this is a Moslem–Turkic area, it is ruled by the Chinese. Our carts were searched through, our possessions examined. They took my bicycle from the back of the cart and it, as well as us I suppose, attracted a large crowd. Bicycles are rarely seen here, and a woman riding one is simply unimaginable.

Millicent explained: ‘We are missionaries, entirely peaceful. We came upon the young mother as we approached your city.’ Then, ‘Sit as still as the Buddha,’ she whispered. ‘Indifference is best in situations like these.’

The baby’s skull was a curious hot thing in my hand, not soft, but neither hard; a padded shell filled with new blood. This was the first time I had ever held a baby so new, and a baby girl. I wrapped her in the blanket, tight, and held her against me in an effort to soothe the angry fists and the purple-red face of a raging soul howling with indignation and terror. Eventually, she swooned into an exhausted sleep. I checked her every moment, fearful that she would die. We struggled to sit as still as we could. There were murmurs and discussions in the fast local dialect. Millicent and Lizzie hissed at me:

‘Cover your hair.’I quickly adjusted my scarf. Like my mother’s, my

hair is a terrible, bright red, and in this region it seems to be a sensation. Along the last stage of our journey from Osh to Kashgar in particular men stared with open mouths as if I were naked, as if I were cavorting before them with wings on my back and silver rings in my nose. In the villages children ran towards me, pointing, then moved backwards as though scared until I was done with it and covered my head with a scarf like a Mohammedan. This worked, but it had fallen off during the scuffle in the dust.

Millicent translated: due to the accusations of the witnesses we were to undergo a trial, charged with murder and witchcraft (or the summoning of devils). Or rather, Millicent was. She was the one who had held the baby aloft and had used her knife on the girl.

‘We will have to bribe our way out of this,’ Millicent whispered, her face was as hard as the sun-charred desert earth.

‘We will give you the money,’ Millicent said, her voice quiet, but clear, ‘though we have to send a message to our supporters in Shanghai and Moscow, which will take some days.’

‘You will be our guests,’ the official responded. ‘Our great city of Kashi is pleasured to host you.’

We are, therefore, forced to remain in this pink,

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dusty basin. Not under ‘housearrest’ exactly, though as we must have permission to leave the house, I confess I fail to see the difference.

London, Present DayPimlico

Lighting the scented candles had been a mistake; now the room smelled like a synthetic pine forest. Frieda blew them out with an excessive puff-puff at each one. It was 1.20am. She closed the window, pulling the sash-frame down with a bang, and looked in the mirror. Her silk vest was the colour of the inside of a shell – cool, silver, shivery – and its pearl-shade faded and melted her down. She glanced around for a cardigan and tipped the bottle of wine she had opened – to let breathe – down the sink, watching for a moment the blood-swill of it drain away. It could breathe as much as it wanted now. From the smell it was rough stuff anyway. At least I didn’t cook for him. She looked at her phone on the table. Not a call, a text, anything.

She deliberated, vaguely, over the thought of running a bath, but didn’t have the energy for submergence,

or the decision of when to get out. Mascara came off with a cotton pad. The last time she was in bed with Nathaniel, several months or so earlier, he had said, ‘I can’t believe you let grubby me lie beside you’. She rubbed her face with a towel. She couldn’t believe she let him, either. Three cacti stood along the windowsill like tired soldiers waiting for instructions. She put a finger against a yellow spike of the largest one and pushed on to it to get the sting but the spike was soft, and fell off at her touch. The cacti had anaemic patches all over them. They were in need of tending. She went to the kitchen.

Children come first. That’s how it is. If there were a contest or a selection process or a ranking system then children would always win. Top priority: the boys. Afflicted, apparently, with disrupted nights, perpetually waking up to check that Daddy is there, to make sure he is breathing in the room, that his hand is near to their head and that they will never be left alone in the dark. Their dreams come scarily – monsters, pirates and loneliness – as do thoughts they can’t control or articulate properly, yet. The last thing they want is for him to disappear to the garage for cigarettes for a few hours in the middle of the night.

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Her palms were itchy, hot then cold. It had all worked well with Nathaniel for a while, the balance of freedom and intimacy. You’re a free spirit, Frie’. You come. You go. The travelling and the landing; the hot, profound, close impulsiveness of him. It used to leave her body light and her daily existence unreal and immaterial, so that it did not matter that he wasn’t in much of it. She was in control, back then, when Nathaniel suggested that he leave his wife to come and be with her, but she refused. She did not want three little boys’ battered hearts upon her conscience. Though there was more to it. He was one of those men who needed tending, like her patchy cacti. She wanted none of that.

She stood at the kitchen sink. Her first night back and he’d missed it. Cool fingers of September air came in from somewhere. Outside a train appeared, heading for Victoria Station.

Electrical lines above the tracks linked and flashed, creating a line of light that sliced Frieda’s face and neck like a laser so that she was exposed for a second, a hung xray in white light, and then thrown immediately back into darkness. It was a relief to be home. That last trip, the last hotel, was not at all fun: a four-star, but with no room service and an empty mini-bar. Police and military vans moving around the square outside the hotel and loudspeakers booming instructions. The internet had been turned off by the authorities across the entire region and the streets were empty apart from packs of soldiers jogging in groups of eight holding riot shields. She had stood at the window staring at her phone as if it were a broken heart in her palm. It flashed up disconnect every time she tried to make an international call. Some sort of civil unrest, but she

had no way of knowing what was happening; she just knew she wasn’t meant to be there. Where? It didn’t really matter. The cities were blending into one, now. It was just yet another place that was no longer safe for her to be in, being English, being a woman. Actually, it was the English part that was the problem. In taxis she always told drivers she was Irish. Nobody hates the Irish any more.

She had booked the first possible flight home and all through the long journey had thought of Nathaniel. In the airport lounge – that existential zone for the lonely traveller – it occurred to her that lately the balance of control was ambiguous. Nathaniel’s unreliability brought out a brutal, almost paralysing frustration in her. She was feeling something new in herself and with horror realised that it was neediness, or worse, a craving for consistency.

For the first time, her work was not enough. There was a cough at the door. Damn. Just as she

had taken all of her make-up off. She walked towards the door, but stopped. There it was again. It wasn’t Nathaniel.

She waited several moments and then walked quietly to the spy-hole. The night light was on in the stairwell and a man was sitting on the floor just outside her door with his back against the wall, legs stretched out in front of him. His eyes were closed but he did not look asleep.

Frieda jumped backwards with her heart whacking against her chest, but she could not resist peeping out again. He was facing her now, as if he could see right through the door. She thought he was going to stand up, come towards her, but he glanced down at his hand and did not move. He was holding a pen.

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Enjoy your literary journey...

HeLPiNg you Discover greAT New books


She went as quietly as she could back into the kitchen. There was a number on the pinboard for the City Guardians, a group of volunteers responsible for cleaning up streets and clearing off the homeless; she could always phone that, or the police?

There was the double lock on the door, but if she put that on now he would hear it and she would only draw attention to herself. She moved into the living room, instead, and returned to the window. In the street the group of kids with their mobile phones had gone and there seemed to be nobody left out there, just the rain, and the concrete swelling in the wetness and the shake of trees sagging under water. At intervals she heard the cough from the stairwell. A city fox, scrawny and barely coated, flashed underneath the skip bins. Frieda looked down the empty, wet street and made a decision. From a cupboard she pulled out a pillow and a blanket. She took another look. He was curled up on the floor now; she could just see his bent back, his leather jacket, the black scruff of his hair.

It was undoubtedly inadvisable to let him know that there was a young woman living here, probably alone, but she opened the door anyway. The man immediately scrambled himself up into a sitting position and looked at her. He had a moustache, and sleepy-looking eyes, not an unpleasant face. Frieda didn’t say anything, didn’t smile, but handed him the pillow and the blanket and quickly closed the door. Five minutes later she looked again through the peephole. He was sitting with the blanket wrapped around his legs, leaning against the wall with the pillow propped behind his head, smoking a cigarette.

In the morning she found the blanket folded up with the pillow balancing on top of it, and on the wall next to her door was a large drawing of a bird: long beak, peculiar legs and a feathery tail. It was not a bird she could identify. There were some words in Arabic and although she actually had elementary Arabic, she wasn’t up to understanding what it said. Below, in English, was written:

As the great poet says you’re afflicted, like me, with a bird’s journey.

Next to the bird was a swirl of peacock feathers, and alongside that an intricate drawing of a boat made out of a flock of seagulls, the seagulls floating off and forming a sunset. Frieda walked out of the doorway to have a proper look. She touched the black marks with her finger, then leaned over the railing to look down the spiral of the receding staircase. The cleaner was on the ground floor, with his mop. He looked up at her and

nodded.

For Beginners: Mount and Away! How easy it seems. To the novice it is not as easy as it looks, yet everyone, or almost everyone, can learn to ride, though there are different ways of going about it

A Lady Cyclist’s Guide to Kashgar – Notes

May 2nd

We have been put up in a Moslem inn because we are considered too unlucky for the Chinese to house. We are ‘guests’ at this Inn of Harmonious Brotherhood and I am minded of the words of Marco Polo about this heat-crushed city:

The people of Kashgar have an astonishing acquaintance with the devilries of enchantment, inasmuch as they make their idols to speak. They can also by their sorceries bring about changes in the weather, and produce darkness, and do a number of things so extraordinary that no-one without seeing them would believe them.

I can believe it. It would not surprise me to see the devil lurking in every corner of this courtyard to which we are confined.

This morning as we waited for Millicent, Lizzie and I strained to see the women in veils and drapes as they fluttered back and forth. They wear gaudy scarves over tunics and vibrant headscarves and though faces are covered it is possible to guess who is handsome, and who less so, from the artfulness of the headwear arrangement.

‘They are more colourful than I expected.’ We were seated on the floor, on bright bolsters and cushions, in a reception-area room that led on to the courtyard. Lizzie sat opposite me flicking at her precious camera.

Outside the main entrance to this inn is a wooden sign with the words ‘One True Religion’ painted across it in red. Tin pots line the shelves in the cramped kitchen and embellished, ornamental teapots with complicated handles made from bone are proudly placed in the divan room. Our host, Mohammed, pours green-coloured bitter tea for us himself, holding his curious teapot high above the cups, allowing the stream of liquid to lengthen like a twinkling rope. Breakfast is served on large copper trays, arranged so that we can look out towards the centrepiece of the house, a small fountain whose running water falls into a shallow pool that is decorated with a scattering of rose and geranium petals. Carved columns of poplar wood lead up the rafters, and a colourful balcony encases a second floor

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HeLPiNg you Discover greAT New books

of rooms. The running water, in this thirsty desert area, is, I suppose, an ever-flowing symbol of this Mohammed’s personal wealth.

‘There are so many of them. Millicent says it is a combination of wives and daughters.’

‘Lizzie, I want to ask about the baby. Do you think she is alive?’

Lizzie shrugged.Mohammed returned and methodically covered the

table with pitchers full of the juices of peaches and melons, plates of wobbling, slightly cooked eggs, flatbreads, rose yoghurt and tomatoes sprinkled with sugar. Next came blue earthenware bowls containing honey, almonds, olives and raisins were placed in a row along with bowls of thick, worm-like noodles. Beneath his peculiar beard, Mohammed’s face is thinner and younger than one first suspects, and although he only has a small amount of English, I noticed that when Millicent said grace quietly over her food last night he turned his head and snorted through his nose, like a horse pulling at its reins.

Lizzie and I both started slightly, and looked up as Millicent emerged from one of the dark rooms, dressed in a blue cotton coat. Her rebellious hair, a frizz that strains against her attempts to control it with wax, was as usual in

a cloud around her head.‘The bribery money from the Inland Mission will take

several weeks to arrive, which means we have no choice but to remain here in Kashgar,’ she spoke as she knelt down at the breakfast spread without smiling, poking her chin upward as if she were trying to reach a ledge to rest it on. Millicent’s body has the contradictory look of a woman of a certain age who has not borne children: surprisingly girlish about the hips and waist, as if the milk of womanhood has passed her by, though she is not mannish either, despite operating outside of the usual restraints of femininity, which is at odds with her woman’s mouth, laugh and her high voice.

‘And the baby, Millicent?’‘They have found a wet-nurse for her. She will be

returned to us shortly.’ Millicent took a sip of peach juice, and licked her thin lips. She looked at me.

‘The question of the baby is unresolved, but for the time being, you will be responsible for her.’

‘Goodness, Millicent, I have no comprehension of how to look after a baby. I merely wanted to reassure myself that she is not dead, or being burned on a pyre.’ She ignored me and lit a Hatamen.

‘Remember, he is tolerating us infidels in his inn because


we are women, the undangerous sex – we should not waste this opportunity. I’ve discovered that one of the middle daughters, Khadega, speaks Russian and so we have been able to communicate very well. It is arranged that we will begin phonetic lessons for her. She is keen to “practise her English”.’

Millicent aspires to capture young women in a holy net as a fisherman catches a minnow and what a catch this would be: directly from inside the false prophet’s house, to be guided into the arms of the only true Prophet.

‘How can you be sure she wants to “practise English”?’ I said. ‘She might actually want to learn English.’

‘Might I remind you’, Millicent stood up from the table, pushing her eye-glasses up her nose, ‘of Matthew 28:16–20, and of the eleven disciples in Galilee who doubted

Jesus. What did he do? He turned to them and said: “All authority in heaven on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and Son and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you”.’

I finished the next line for her: ‘ “And surely, He said, I am with you always, to the very end of age.” ’

She made a light hissing noise. It irks Millicent that I know my scripture, and recently, she has been opting for the more obvious of texts. Lizzie’s eyes, always large and wet, grew larger and wetter: don’t Eva. I would hardly have thought it possible.

‘Well, I suppose this is as good a place as another to set upa Mission.’

Lizzie looked at me. It is many long months since we left Victoria Station (where I picked up my glorious, green BSA Lady’s Roadster bicycle). Our luggage was labelled with fantastical words: BERLIN. BAKU. KRASNOVODSK. OSH. KASHGAR.

Before we came, the Reverend James McCraven talked of our destination (such as we had one) as the leastvisited place on earth. His craggy fingers poked invisible blisters in the air as he raved of barren deserts full of evil idols and beings no better than animals, his look implying that I was in some way responsible for such barrenness, such empty, heathen terrain. I lay in the stiff, uncomfortable bed at the Inland Mission’s Training

School in Liverpool holding a stolen, illicit, and for that reason much-treasured apple underneath the blanket. As my finger scraped the shiny red skin of the apple I tried to picture a desert, conjuring vast, empty spaces full of refractions of light and an infinite variety of shades of sand. I pierced the skin so that juice came out and with the tip of my finger burrowed a hole such as a worm might make into the apple’s flesh, longing to reach an empty place, thinking of the peace and stillness that must be inherent in such a landscape. I have yet to find this blissful void.

Instead, there has been an eternal lugging: railway tickets and strange hotels, holdalls full of quinine and sticking plasters, the rolling and unrolling of a Jaeger sleeping bag, arguments with the dragoman, trunks being loaded on and off and sorrowful headaches. Then, once past Osh we were confronted with the appalling jangle of travelling by postal cart; such a clattering of the bone and an incomparable torture of muscle. There is nausea, too, as we recoil at much, if not all, of the food available and the endless trouble with fleas.

Still, perhaps, after weeks of tramping, Lizzie and I have arrived at the thought that we would travel to the end of the world and round again. I don’t believe either of us ever expected to stop. I was thankful for that look from Lizzie. Lately, it seems to me that Millicent has stolen her, spelled her away from me. Our proximity through travel has annihilated any sense of intimacy so that I am left alone, watching the two of them, but I saw that she, too, does not want to remain here. We are together, at least, in that.

A Lady Cyclists Guide to Kashgar is available now from most good book stores. All work is subject to copyright.

www.ladycyclistsguide.comFollow Suzanne @suzyjoinson

Publisher: BloomsburyFormat: HardbackRRP: £12.99Thanks to Bloomsbury for providing the sample.

17July 16th 201216 July 16th 2012

About The Author

sUZanne JoinsonSuzanne Joinson works in the literature department of the British Council, and regularly travels widely across the Middle East, North Africa, China and Europe. In 2007 she won the New Writing Ventures Award for Creative Non-Fiction for ‘Laila Ahmed’. She is studying for a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, University of London, and lives by the sea on the South Coast of England. Image ©Simon Webb

Tap here to buy thisbook on Kindle or in print.


CeleBrITY sUmmer readsAs the celebs pack for the summer hols, which hot new releases will they be tucking in their suitcases/Kindles? Of course most ‘slebs will claim to read Dostoevsky and Dickens - whilstsecretly indulging in ‘Fifty Shades’! So we’ve checked out the hottest summer releases andhere’s our ‘recommended reading list’ for some of our favourite (!) stars!

18 July 16th 2012

Prince chArleSnew Ways to Kill Your Mother By colm Toibin

In pieces that range from Tennessee Williams matricidal fantasies (don’t worry Charlie,

you’re not the only one!) to the relationship between fathers and sons in the writing of JamesBaldwin and Barack Obama, Colm Tóibín illuminates the intimate connections between writers and their families. We think the heir to the throne might just take comfort (or a few ideas!) from these essays as his mother hogs the royal limelight –AGAIN - this summer!

Ken livingSTOnerivers of london: Midnight riot By Ben Aaronovitch

Don’t despair, Ken. If you can’t be mayor, perhaps you can apply to the Harry

Potter school of London CSI and beat Boris, Dumbledore style! Peter Grant was just a regular PC in the Met but then he’s co-opted into a secret department of magical law enforcement, protecting London from nests of vampires, warring river gods and ghoulish grave-diggers. When the spirit of riot and rebellion awakens in the city, it falls to Grant to bring order out of chaos - or die trying.

CeleBrITY sUmmer reads

Celebrity Summer Reads

19July 16th 2012

Derren BrOWnPart of the Spell By rachel heath

This hotly anticipated follow up from Costa shortlisted author, Rachel Heath, explores our

everyday delusions and illusions. When a woman disappears from the small provincial market town where she has lived a quiet respectable community life, she leaves behind few clues as to why she might have vanished, This is a novel about what it means to say you want ‘the quiet life’ in the modern world, about the contracts we enter -- love, marriages, houses and work, about community, nostalgia and neighbourliness. It is also a novel about illusions and tricks of the light, perfect for Mr Brown!

rOY hODgSOnSoccernomicsBy Simon Kuper & Stefan Szymanski(previously published as ‘Why england lose’)

Why do England lose? Why do Germany & Brazil Win?

Penalties- what are they good for? Soccernomics (previously published as ‘Why England Lose’) uses economic theoryto answer these and other questions that have plagued football fans throughout the ages. Perhaps Roy can pick up a few tips for the World Cup!

PuDSY AnD AShleighPup idolBy Anna Wilson

Word is that publishers wanted to call this ‘Puppy’s got Talent’ but

weren’t allowed to! The tag line is ‘It’s a million percent yes’ and the covers pays homage to a certain Talent TV show which might just feature Amanda Readman and David Walliams. You get the idea!One girl and her puppy – the perfect dream team, dancing their way to talent show glory! Getready for Honey, Superstar Pooch-in-Training! Ideal for small pet loving ‘BGT’ fans!

FrAnciS MAuDe AnD SiMOn cOWellPop! By catherine Bruton

O il refinery strikes meet ‘The X Factor’ in this hilarious and heartbreaking tale of three

teenagers pursuing the talent show dream in the recession hit North West. And if these savvy youngsters can work out how to resolve the industrial dispute whilst also sussing out how to play the Talent TV editors at their own game, perhaps Francis Maude and Simon Cowell should take note! Oh, there’s an Olympic theme to this one too, so perhaps they can lend it to Seb Coe when they’re done!

STePhAnie MeYerThe radleysBy Matt haig

Move over, Cullens! Vampire Lit just got a taste of dry Brit-wit and

sardonic humour – at long flipping last! The Radleys are an average family living in the suburbs - they just happen to be vampires. But this is a refreshing alternative to much of the paranormal fodder out there. It is pointed, clever and witty. Think ‘American Beauty’ with vampires’ or ‘The Addams Family’ meets ‘Little Miss Sunshine’. Take note, Ms Meyer, the funny British Vampires are out to get you!

BOriS JOhnSOncapital By John lanchester

Acomplex and gripping tale of London life, from the best-selling author of

‘Whoops!’This is a post-crash, state-of-the-nation novel grubby depicting an uncertain, fragmented London society that has almost replaced religion with shopping. Weaving together the stories of a cast of disparate characters including the greedy banker, the selfish wife, the hard-working Pole, the devout Muslims and the heroic refugee, Capital tackles serious topics with humour and compassion. It’s almost a job description for the newly re-appointed London Mayor!


The Laundry Man is the remarkable autobiography of Ken Rijock, a decorated Vietnam veteran and litigation lawyer who would go on to become the

middleman between Escobar’s Medellín Cartel and the Mafia, responsible for the laundering of millions of dollars.

The story starts in Miami at the turn of the 1980’s, following a collapsed marriage Rijock finds himself living with the friend of a friend near downtown Miami. It quickly transpires that Rijock’s new housemate is dealing large quantities of cocaine and is well connected within the criminal fraternity.

With legitimate expertise in dealing with Caribbean tax havens, Rijock soon finds himself being asked to launder dirty money on behalf of his housemate’s clients. His first project sees him having to move six million dollars in cash out of the US to Anguilla. Through meticulous planning and some carefully chosen bribes Rijock successfully smuggles the money through customs in what would be the first of over a hundred such trips.

Rijock’s narrative successfully allows readers to appreciate and enjoy the full tension, fear and elation each successful operation brings without being bogged down by the legal technicalities of the operations.

As the story progresses so does Rijock’s expertise, he

develops several ingenious methods for laundering money and smuggling drugs which would earn him notoriety amongst the criminal underworld as a ‘go-to man’ in an emergency. By 1986, Ken’s client base extends across Europe, the United States and South America.

The good times for Rijock are numbered however; the emergence of crack cocaine on the streets of Miami in the latter half of the 80’s leads to a huge police clampdown on drug smuggling. An increasingly paranoid Rijock finds his life becoming more and more claustrophobic as client after client is arrested. As long-standing ‘business partners’ betray one another in exchange for sentence reductions Rijock knows that he can no longer trust any of his former clients, setting the scene for an incredibly tense climax to the story.

The Laundry Man is entertaining throughout; the author’s candid account of his role in the laundering of millions of dollars of dirty money is, of course, fascinating, however the book goes beyond merely re-stating what occurred. The best parts of the story arise from the innumerable tensions between Rijock’s personal and professional life as he tries to balance the demands of a long-term relationship, the running of a legitimate legal practice and working for some of the most notorious drug lords operating through 1980’s Miami.

The laUndryman

By Rory Jones

By Ken Rijock

Like Frank Abagnale’s Catch Me If You Can and Howard Marks’ Mr Nice, The Laundry Man is the remarkable story of an ordinary man caught up in an extraordinary life.

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The Laundry Man

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Prologue

The tension was palpable. They were taking an age to look over the documents. I considered explaining it again, but it was all there in black and white. One

of the brothers was fidgeting over the paperwork; his fat, cigar-stained finger danced over the lines of text, like a child learning to read . . . well, a kid who’d just sampled too much of the pure, uncut cocaine they had just shipped into the United States. The other two stood behind him, equally jumpy. One grinned, or was it a grimace? The other flashed a glint of chrome at his waist. He was always posturing. How had I got myself into this? At the start it was easy, it was hardly even breaking the law – just helping out a few people who were more friends than clients. They were good guys, not badasses. These three, however, were human garbage. The Martinez brothers: Cuban Americans whose parents were exiles from Castro’s regime; guys who’d started off in life in Miami without a dime in their pockets and who were now comfortably millionaires, thanks to the cocaine that was flooding through south Florida and into the rest of the US and Canada. And thanks also to me. I had assisted them in ensuring that the millions of dollars of dirty cash they got through drug deals could be safely washed, cleaned and folded without any trace. You see: I was the Laundry Man.

I offered unique services. Got two million dollars of filthy drug money you don’t know what to do with? I’m your man. Need to set up companies to hide your illicit business from law enforcement agencies? Not a problem. This meeting was in their safe house in suburban Miami. In a matter of weeks they’d have moved on from here, taking all traces with them. At that moment, however, we had business to attend to. My assistance had been mainly low profile – I’d set up some bogus companies in the Caribbean, registered a couple of boats with fictitious details in the United Kingdom and moved some money into the tax havens to accomplish that. All simple stuff, but priceless to gangs without the know-how. This was my first encounter with all three brothers together and they didn’t yet trust me. How could they know that the smart lawyer before them hadn’t just set up a paper maze that enabled me to stash the money in an offshore vault . . . one that only I had the key to? I glanced at Charlie. He was their partner, exactly why I never knew, and the only person in the room I trusted. ‘It’s all there,’ he piped up. ‘Ken’s done you a great service, like I said. He’s a genius, isn’t he?’ The younger brother, Joey, looked up. Of all the siblings he looked the most assimilated to North American ways. Young and athletic, he appeared clean and intelligent and spoke with the clearest south Florida accent. The older the brothers got, the more stereotypically Cuban they became. Hugo, the middle one, was obese, with a thick

mop of black hair and two days’ stubble. The eldest, Enrique, was heavy set with an imposing moustache and thick beard and spoke, by choice, in that maddening English-Cuban patois – the worst of both languages. Joey finally lifted his head from the papers I’d presented him with. He smiled. ‘I know. This is beautiful. So simple.’ He turned to the others and nodded. I breathed out. Charlie shot me a look that said: ‘I told you there’d be no problems.’ Joey signalled to Enrique, the eldest brother. From behind a sofa the big Cuban produced a small holdall. ‘Regalito’, he grunted as he placed the bag on the floor a foot in front of me. I turned to Joey. ‘A little gift,’ he translated, but I knew what it meant. Gingerly I reached over and slid the gym bag to my feet. I glanced around. All eyes were on me, the brothers’ grimaces now widening to expectant grins. Although I never set a fee and considered it almost impolite to discuss such matters, a cash reward wasn’t unexpected. For what I’d done ten thousand dollars wouldn’t have been over-charging. I caressed the side of the bag. Something told me I didn’t want to know what was there. Slowly unzipping the fastener, I peered inside. My heart stopped. No cash. Instead there was a clear plastic bag, packed solid with white powder. I lifted it out and held up my trophy, sparking raucous laugh-ter among the Cubans. I smiled, hoping it wouldn’t convey what I was thinking: What the hell am I expected to do with this? ‘Your gift,’ Joey smiled. All I had done was set up a clutch of bogus companies and registered a series of boats that allowed my clients to success-fully ship hundreds of kilos of cocaine into Miami. Charlie did the explaining. ‘Half a kilo. Worth ten thousand dollars on the street.’ Half a kilo? I did the calculations in my head. Just 400 grams is a minimum fifteen-year mandatory sentence. You don’t get out of prison before that time is up. I smiled. It was all I could do. As I placed the block back in the bag and zipped it up, I knew refusal was futile. At best, saying thanks but no thanks would be considered impolite. At worst it could cause real offence. I smiled. ‘You shouldn’t have.’ I made hurried goodbyes and fled, my feet hardly touching the steps down the two flights to the car lot. I walk-ran to the car, glancing round to see if I could detect any signs that the building was being watched, and loaded the bag in the trunk. For all I knew the safe house was under surveillance. If the brothers were willing to hand out this amount of uncut coke free, how much more did they have stashed? The place could have been staked out by Metro-Dade or the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for days. I drove, but for the first few blocks I was directionless. It was 3 p.m. People were going about their business. Schools were about to let out, meaning a 15 mph speed limit, and plenty of local law. Shit. Every other second I glanced in the mirror. How long had that car been behind me? Only then did the location sink in. I was west of Dadeland, in the heart of strictly suburban Kendall, just a few blocks’ drive from a mall where Colombian drug gangs had settled their

The Laundry Man

differences with a liquor store bloodbath in broad daylight. That shooting signalled the moment when the underground drug wars spilled on to Main Street USA. Two gunmen had calmly got out of a truck, walked into the store and gunned down two other men, wounding the store clerk. When their bloodstained bodies were eventually identified, it emerged the victims were one of the biggest traffickers in Miami and his bodyguard. The quarrel was probably a disagreement over an unpaid debt. Now I was in the middle of a neighbourhood targeted by the cops. Paranoia took over. Did I have a faulty tail light, anything that could bring me to the attention of an eagle-eyed traffic cop? If I got stopped my life was over. I started to sweat, my stomach churning. What would have been a routine thirty-minute drive to the house had become a white-knuckle ride. If I got pulled for speeding I was in big trouble. Try persuading a judge that half a kilo is for personal use. That got me thinking. The going rate for cocaine had once been fifty-five thousand dollars a kilo but was now only twenty thousand, thanks to the deluge flooding Miami via Colombia. It wasn’t ideal but, if Charlie was right, I could make a nice piece of change. I pulled over to a pay phone, raking through my pockets for a quarter, my eyes scanning the street. I called Andre, the man who had pulled me into my new career. No answer. There was nothing else for it. I’d have to drive carefully over to his house. I pulled up just as

he arrived back. I explained my little problem. He couldn’t shift it now but that might change by tomorrow. All I had to do was sit on it for twenty-four hours. No big deal. I could take it home and hide it in the house. The house I shared with a police officer.

1. The CrossroadsFort Lauderdale, Florida

31 August 1979

I caught sight of my reflection as I went for the fattest line. The coke shot up my nose, straight to my brain. I surfaced and snorted loudly, taking in so much air it felt my lungs were ten times their size. I sat back on the sofa, exhaled and gestured to the man sit-ting next to me that the upturned mirror and three remaining carefully cut lines were his. I’d only met him five minutes before and already I’d forgot-ten his name. I only knew he was an investment banker who, strangely, did not drive. My old lawyer instincts had taken over and I suspected most likely there was a driving under the influence charge in his not too distant past. ‘Wow,’ he smiled, patting me on the shoulder like we were old pals. Silently I stood up and, running my fingers through my

23July 16th 2012


HeLPINg You dIsCover greAT New books


curly hair to feel the tingles of coke rush, went looking for some entertainment. It was the last day of summer, it was party time, and I’d agreed enthusiastically when my two newfound flatmates had suggested taking the twenty-minute trip to Fort Lauderdale from Miami to check out a show at a gay bar. We’d then attend what was amounting to an all-night coke party. Carol and Michaela, nightclub waitresses, had taken me in as their new rent-paying room-mate after my marriage collapsed and now they were hell-bent on showing me a good time. And, boy, were they. In the villa that backed on to the canal network, cocaine was everywhere. Served up like hors d’oeuvres. I’d taken it before but only occasionally. I’d been a child of the sixties so smoking pot was a rite of passage and I’d tried opium in Vietnam but as a lawyer I’d never been into drugs. Clearly I’d been in the minority. For the whole of the seventies, south Florida had been in the grip of cocaine madness. Everyone was at it. For lawyers, doctors, accountants, professionals of any kind, it was the drug of choice. The subculture had become the mainstream. By the turn of the decade, America was awash with cocaine and Miami was the hub where it all flooded in. Until then this had largely passed me by. Now I was getting a crash course. Nodding my head in time to the music – ‘Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now’

was blaring from the state-of-the-art stereo – I half-walked-half-boogied from room to room, squeezing past sweaty bodies. Couples cavorted in corners while every other available square of floor space became a makeshift cocaine bar. I caught up with Carol and Michaela on the way to the kitchen. ‘Hey there,’ Carol exclaimed, her pupils dilated. ‘Havin’ a good time?’ she asked in her slight southern drawl. I nodded, grinning. The rush was coming on fully now. I was no square, I’d had my share of parties but this rocket-fuelled revelry was heaven after what I’d been through in the last few months. It wasn’t that long ago that I was starting to think things were going well. I’d been working as a bank lawyer in a big city law firm, with a lovely wife and an apartment with views over the bay and ocean. Yet in the space of a few months my marriage and dreams of settling down to what I’d thought was a normal life were in tat-ters. My wife Sarah had never recovered from the triple tragedy of losing her parents and sister in relatively quick succession.

It was a situation that would have knocked the strongest person sideways and our marriage sadly collapsed under the strain. I then realized I wasn’t cut out for the ruthless dog-eat-dog world of the big city firm and didn’t share the relentless drive of my colleagues to step over other lawyers

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The Laundry Man

to get to the top. In desperation I’d quit and set up on my own as a lawyer practising in low-level litigation and real estate. I was my own boss but my experience with the downtown firm had left me wondering if my heart was still in practising the law. I simply stopped caring about my work after the trauma of my failed marriage. Now, at thirty-four, I was disillusioned and alone. I was drowning my sorrows one night in Ménage, the nightclub that occupied the basement of my apartment building, when Carol and her room-mate offered me a way out of my troubles. ‘Come and live with us,’ Michaela had said. ‘It’ll be fun.’ It was an offer I couldn’t refuse. That had been two weeks ago. Since then I’d discovered my new room-mates were party girls extraordinaire. I was quickly seduced by their carefree life-style. So far there’d been no suggestion of a romance with either of them. They were on the hunt for someone with access to serious coke and serious cash. Carol could have made a living as a Cher lookalike, at a time when Cher still looked like herself. Nearly six feet tall and dark, she had a devilish twinkle in her eye, and Michaela was built for fun. Both in their early twenties, they liked having me around because I shared the rent, but the age gap meant that I was a bit old for the fun they had in mind. They were on a mission – a sexual, drug-fuelled thrill-seeking crusade that was mesmerizing to observe and a world apart from the life I’d been living during my four-year marriage to Sarah.

They lived with energy only cocaine could supply. Forget about food. I caught up with them only momentarily. They’d attracted the attention of two young dealers who hauled them squealing into an adjacent bedroom. ‘Friends of yours?’ I turned. A strawberry blonde was leaning against the opening into the kitchen clutching two glasses of champagne. ‘My room-mates.’ ‘Ah. I see.’ She was

stunning – tanned, in a skimpy gold dress, with long, wavy hair. ‘They’re uncontrollable.’ She seemed to nod knowingly. ‘You here with anyone?’ I asked, keen to keep the conversation going while at the same time establishing if she was available. God, it seemed so long. I was rusty. ‘In there,’ she gestured with her head towards the door behind which I could hear muffled snorting and laughing from the girls. ‘Oh. Right.’ ‘Friends, likewise. They always do this. Invite me to parties then leave me standing with a spare glass.’ ‘I can take that for you.’ She smiled and handed me the flute. The regular me would have simply been grateful for the conversation, but stimulated by the coke I started to think this might be an opportunity to get back in the saddle. We found a quieter place to chat where we weren’t being buf-feted by revellers shuttling between the drinks coolers and the bathrooms. Her name was Kimberly. She was a banker, based in Fort Lauderdale. The fact that I’d dabbled in banking law for my previous employer gave us something in common but I wasn’t interested in talking shop. I was interested in how I was going to get her out of that little gold dress. She too wasn’t averse to coke, and before long she’d invited me back to her place a few streets away. I interrupted my friends’ little session to arm myself with some Colombian marching powder and then we were out into the balmy air. The sex was fast and frantic. I don’t know if it was the coke or the release after the frustration of my failed marriage, but I felt great. All thoughts of Sarah went out of my mind as we got hot and heavy in the sticky heat. I broke off for some refuelling and, pumped up by two more lines, retreated to the bathroom to catch breath. Splashing my face with cool water, I looked in the mirror. My hair, not so long ago clipped to regulation standards for the military was now frizzy and in danger of going all curly in the humid air. My skin was flushed from all that

25July 16th 201224 July 16th 2012


coke. ‘Hey, what’s keeping you?’ came the shout from the bed-room. I paused and smiled at my reflection. Nothing was keeping me. Nothing at all. I dived back into the bedroom. Friday night merged into Saturday blended into Sunday. From being a dedicated professional I was now burning the candle all ends. Since I’d moved in with the girls life had become one long weekend. My legal practice, my pride and joy when I’d initially branched out, became an irritation. I shuffled into work late but found an excuse to knock off early and hit the bars. My law practice was fast becoming dead last in my priorities. I’d catch up on any clients tomorrow. Work could be bumped until I found a suitable window. My newfound freedom made me feel invincible. It didn’t matter that I was staying up all night on the white lines because I’d do the work when I got round to it. Everyone in Miami was the same. Doctors and bankers, other lawyers, it seemed they were all at it. When the girls went out at night I wanted to join them. Even if they stayed in we chopped up some lines or smoked dope and popped open the drinks. There was always something to celebrate, another day in paradise. It was a never-ending party and it seemed nearly everyone they knew was a dealer they could call to keep it going. Of course, after a few weeks of living like this something had to give. Inevitably, it was the day job. Soon clients started taking their business elsewhere. My response was simple. I went out and got more blitzed. I was living every day as it came. And I was in that frame of mind when one day the phone rang. It was Michaela. She had been away for the weekend. With characteristic recklessness she’d gone to Ohio to take part in a motorcycle race, not as the driver but as the passenger on the back. Neither Carol nor I had heard from her since she’d left. ‘Ken, you’re not going to believe what happened. I was in a crash on the bike.’ This wasn’t as hard to believe as you might think. She was in hospital with a broken leg, she told me. ‘Listen,’ she added. ‘When I get out of here I’m going to stay with a friend off Coral Way. I’ll let you know when. You’ll come visit me, yeah?’ My first reaction was disappointment that Michaela was breaking up our little party but I figured it was temporary and she’d be back when her leg was better. It was some two days later when she called again. She’d moved in with the friend and wanted me to see her.

At the time Shenandoah was a lower-middle-class predominantly Cuban community just south from downtown Miami. Most of the people who lived and worked there were blue-collar immigrants. An area distinguished by its ordinariness, neither poor nor affluent, it was a quiet corner of almost-suburbia. The house Michaela was staying in was an old, traditional Florida house with a white-wood facade, a porch and swing. An old sign for Pan American airlines stood outside. Her friend must have worked in the industry. The door opened and she stood there, balanced precariously on crutches. She invited me in. The single-

storey house was what they called a ‘shotgun shack’. If you fired a gun in there you’d hit every room. From a quick glance I could see it com-prised a living room, a dining room, a kitchen and two bedrooms, all on the same level. The house was eclectic, with wood floors throughout and a large fireplace in the living room – pretty unusual for south Florida where the temperature rarely dips below 75ºF. The walls were full of drawings and artwork from Colombia and Jamaica and lying around were artefacts like whalebones and other things I’d only seen in museums. Ceiling fans spun overhead as Michaela and I chatted. After a few minutes there were footsteps on the wood floor and a man appeared. Handsome, with shaggy hair and a remarkable Pancho Villa moustache, he had a relaxed air about him as he came over towards us. Michaela turned in his direction and then to me. ‘Ken. This is Andre, the guy I’ve been telling you about.’ ‘Andre,’ she turned back to the man. ‘My good friend Ken.’ With that I was introduced to the person who would change my life beyond all recognition.

The Laundry Man is available now from most good book stores. All work belongs to and is subject to copyright of Ken Rijock.

Publisher: PenguinFormat: PaperbackRRP: £12.99Thanks to Penguin for providing the sample.

29July 16th 201226 July 16th 2012

About The Author

ken rIJoCkKenneth Rijock is a financial crime consultant based in Miami. He has more than 25 year’s experience in the field of money laundering, as a practising laundryman, financial compliance consultant, and trainer/lecturer to law and intelligence agencies including the FBI. He has testified three times before US Congress committees. Rijock is a veteran of the conflict in Vietnam and Cambodia, and holds the Combat Infantryman’s Badge and Bronze Star Medal.


The Child Thief

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The Child Thief opens with the figure of man lumbering out of the snow, dragging a sledge which contains the bodies of two dead children,

towards the isolated village of Vyriv. Luka, a Russian war veteran, now settled to the life of a farmer, takes the stranger into his home, tends his wounds and waits to hear his story. The childrens’ corpses bear terrible injuries, consistent with cannibalism, and once the other villagers become aware of this, they drag the stranger out into the snow and lynch him.

Once the frenzied attack is over the ringleader, Dmitri, discovers that his little girl is missing and the man they have killed was innocent. Luka is the only person in Vyriv capable of tracking the child thief across the treacherous terrain, so he strikes out with his sons and Dmitri, driven by a promise made to his daughter to bring her friend home safely.

Quickly Luka realises that the man they are hunting is no ordinary criminal. They have become the hunted, but to what purpose Luka doesn’t know. And as they

move deeper into the frozen countryside they become aware that the child thief isn’t the only threat in the snowy forests. The Bolsheviks are closing in, clearing villages and killing at will, creeping towards the families left behind in Vyriv.

The Child Thief is a page-turner of the highest calibre, atmospheric, beautifully written and thoroughly engrossing, a real miss-your-stop novel, and it promises great things for Smith’s next offering, which is set during

the Russian Civil War. If you’re a fan of historical novels you’ll find this several cuts above the norm and if not, prepare to be converted.

CFL Rating: 5 StarsFor more great book reviews visit www.crimefictionlover.com

The Child Thief

By Eva Dolan

By Dan Smith

In the snow, death is not the coldest thing waiting for you

29July 16th 201228 July 16th 2012

“Quickly luka realises that the man they are hunting is no ordinary criminal. They have become the hunted, but to what purpose luka doesn’t know.”

If you’ve read the excerpt from The Child Thief here in Underground Book Club, you’ll already know that Dan Smith is capable of captivating readers in a bleak,

frozen and dangerous landscape. But that’s not all, there are historical and political aspects to his writing.

Tell us a little about The Child Thief...Well, in a nutshell, The Child Thief is about a man who makes a promise to his daughter, vowing to bring back her friend from the kidnapper who has taken her away across the frozen wilderness of the Ukrainian steppes. In wider terms, it’s about strength, humanity and courage - a criminal thriller with a historical backdrop and an air of social nightmare.

This is the first of your novels to have a historical setting, what drew you to 1930s Ukraine?The story came first. Or, rather, the opening image. I saw the stranger coming out of the snowstorm, dragging the sled, bringing a darkness into the lives of the main characters. After that, I had to find a setting for the story - I wanted a harsh environment to really test the main characters. I already knew something about Soviet history, but didn’t realise how much Ukraine suffered under Stalin, and the deeper I went, the more I realised it was the perfect setting. So not only does the main character have to contend with the physical environment and the killer he is tracking, but also a severe political environment where no-one can trust anyone else.

It’s hugely atmospheric, you must have buried yourself in research...Well, I certainly know more about 1930s Ukraine now than I did before, but the story has to be the most important thing. I knew I had to give the reader some detail about the historical setting, but I tried not to get too bogged down in it.

Hopefully there’s just enough to give the story an authentic sense of place. I really wanted the reader to feel like they were somewhere else.

Geographical isolation is a theme in your work, where does that concern come from?I think it comes from an interest in seeing people solve problems on their own. There’s no police to call, no ambulance, no mobile phones. There’s something primal about that and it’s fascinating to think about how far people

would go and what they would do to protect themselves and the people they love. I think my main characters are often emotionally isolated too. Luka is unlike anyone else in his village — he’s the only Russian, the only veteran, the only man who can find the kidnapped child. Perhaps it also comes from the fact that I lived in some weird and wonderful places when I was growing up and spent a lot of time at boarding school – maybe a psychologist would find some connection there to the isolation?

What’s coming up next for you?At the moment I’m writing a follow up, using the Russian Civil War as a setting to throw another of my long-suffering characters into. It was a violent and confused time in which a number of different armies were fighting one another and people committed some terrible atrocities. My main character, Nicolai, is tired of the war and deserts his unit to return home to his family, but when he arrives at his village, it’s completely empty except for an incoherent old woman, driven mad by what has taken place there. It’s up to Nicolai to find out what has happened to his family and the other villagers.

For more great interviews and features visit http://www.crimefictionlover.com.

“A criminal thriller with a historical backdrop and an air of social nightmare.”

The Child Thief

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inTerview: dAn smiTh

Crime Fiction Lover’s Eva Dolan caught up with Dan Smith to talk about his third book, The Child Thief, and find out what is in store for the future.

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WINTER 1930

Village of Vyriv – Western Ukraine

Chapter 1

The distant figure was little more than a dark smudge on the steppe. The land was flat and white and cold; a vast sea of nothing with just

that single blemish on the landscape, drawing the eye. During the war, an imperfection on the horizon would have halted a company in its tracks. Boots would have ceased their struggle, and the chatter of rifle slings would have fallen silent. Fear and curiosity would be felt in equal measure.

And in that silence, would be the long wait to see what might come of the lonely fault in the otherwise faultless beauty of the steppe. A single stain that could multiply into an army, bringing with it only violence and ferocity and death.

But the war was over, and red had crushed all colours that stood in its path, yet the blurred stain in the distance still brought fear and curiosity. It shouldn’t have been there.

Staring against the wind, bitter tears welled and clouded my sight. I wiped them away and squinted against the few flakes that had started to fall. I contemplated the figure, watched it shift and blur, then I moved to the edge of the tall grass, wading through snow as deep as my calves, dropping to one knee and resting my elbow on my thigh. I blinked hard, touching a cheek to the cold stock of my rifle, and brought one eye close to the scope.

Magnified as it was, the dark spot was still just a stain on the brilliance of the drift, but I could see it moving towards us as the wind blew across the surface of yesterday’s fall, whipping the soft snow into a powder that floated in a swirling mist.

‘You see something?’ Viktor said.My sons moved behind me, but I kept my eye to the

scope.‘What is that?’ Petro asked, coming alongside. ‘Some

kind of animal?’ His face was almost hidden, his hat pulled low, and only his eyes were visible above the scarf that covered his mouth and nose. Petro was just a few moments younger than his brother. Two boys, seventeen years old and almost men; born together, raised together but as different as the seasons. Summer and winter. One coarse and hardened, with an outlook that saw no subtlety. The other younger, more complex, more in tune with who he was.

‘Could be.’ Breath clouded around my face as I spoke,

misting the scope lens. I wiped the glass with a finger of my glove.

‘Let me see.’ Viktor slung his own rifle over his back because it was without a scope and useless at this distance. He squatted beside me, his thick coat moving against mine.

I nodded, letting him take the rifle, and Viktor remained silent as he watched the magnified shape.

‘What’s it look like to you?’ I said. ‘An animal?’‘Hard to tell. The wind’s picked up again; it looks like

there’s a storm coming.’ He took a breath and steadied the rifle as the icy wind gathered strength, making him shiver despite his thick clothes. ‘No, wait. I think it’s . . . yes, it’s a man. I’m sure of it.’ He took his eye from the scope and stared out into the oncoming blizzard. ‘Someone’s coming,’ he said.

‘Who?’ Petro asked. ‘You think it might be activists? Red Army?’ It was the threat hanging over Vyriv: that one day the activists would come with soldiers to our village and take everything we had.

‘There’s just one person,’ Viktor said.‘Give me that.’ I took back the rifle and scoped the

figure once more.It was closer now. Not just a dark stain, but a person;

the movement was clear. A shambling gait, head down, shoulders hunched, bent at the waist. A solitary figure without an army to follow it, but I eased back the rifle bolt and reassured myself that a cartridge was pushed home.

‘Petro, I want you to go back,’ I said. ‘Warn your mother first. Then tell the others.’

‘What about you?’‘We’re going to wait here. See who’s coming.’Petro didn’t want to go, but he knew argument was

useless, so he went without another word, raising his knees high as he lifted his feet from the snow.

I watched him until he was gone, disappeared below the lip of the hill, then I turned to watch the figure once again.

‘Take this.’ I handed my rifle to Viktor, knowing the rare scoped weapon would be more effective to cover me from a distance. ‘I’ll use yours. Watch from the trees.’ I nodded in the direction of the forest which grew along the steppe to the right. A line of leafless trunks, dark and barren against the grey sky. Their crooked fingers were heavy with icicles which glinted in the rare days of sunshine but now hung in shadow. The uppermost branches of the trees at the periphery were filled with the black spots of clumped twigs and forest detritus the crows had used to build their nests.

Viktor didn’t take the rifle. He looked across at the trees, then back at me, indecision in his expression.

‘You’ll be safe,’ I told him. ‘Stay at the edge of the

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forest, that’s all.’‘I’m not afraid. I just don’t want to leave you alone.’‘I won’t be alone. You’ll be watching me with this.’ I

put the rifle into my son’s hand. ‘Do as I ask, Viktor. I need you to watch for me.’

Viktor sighed and nodded before he turned away and struck out for the edge of the trees.

When Viktor was gone, I adjusted my scarf and took up my son’s rifle. To the right, crows shifted in the trees, snapping their bleak cries into the afternoon as Viktor approached, but it was cold and they were as embittered by it as we were. Once they had voiced their displeasure, they became quiet, and the only sound was the wind against the wool covering my ears.

Out on the steppe, the figure approached.

Chapter 2

The progress of the figure was sluggish. His legs dragged through the snow, barely lifting, and his head hung like a beast of burden. His body was bent almost double, his arms hanging limp at his sides. He was like a walking corpse,

kept alive by nothing more than the determination to push on.

Swathed in thick clothes and with his face covered, he wore a stout rope around his waist, running out behind him to a sled covered with a tarpaulin thick with ice and snow. When I called out for him to stop, the man kept coming, stopping only when his head was just a few inches from the barrel of my gun. He spoke one word before dropping to his knees. He said, ‘Please.’

I followed the man’s movement, keeping the weapon pointed at his head, but the stranger remained as he was, as if in prayer, with his head bowed and his shoulders slumped.

When he finally looked up at me through the narrow gap in his coverings, I could see there was almost no life in his eyes.

I lowered the rifle a fraction and the man spoke again. ‘Thank God,’ he said, and fell face first into the snow at my feet.

I waited for a moment, then released my finger from the trigger and prodded the man’s back with the rifle barrel. There was give in his clothing, as if the man beneath was thinner than he appeared to be. I shoved him again, but he didn’t move, so I raised a hand to Viktor, hoping he could

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HELpINg yoU DISCoVER gREaT NEW bookS


still see me despite the fall of snow in the air.I turned the man onto his back and worked my fingers

through his clothing to find the skin of his neck so I could feel for a pulse.

‘Is he dead?’ Viktor asked when he arrived at my side.I shook my head. ‘Not yet. Check the sled.’Viktor went to the sled while I put my hands under the

man’s armpits and prepared to drag him.‘Anything?’ My voice was almost lost to the wind when

I called out. I looked back to see Viktor standing with a corner of the tarpaulin in his fingers, lifted so he could look beneath.

Viktor spoke without turning in my direction, his shrouded face angled down towards what was concealed beneath the waterproof covering. His voice was muffled. ‘I think you should see this.’

I released my grip on the stranger and went over, stopping as soon as I saw the children lying on the sled. Immediately I looked away, lifting my eyes to the barren trees. But I didn’t see the black branches. Instead I saw the image of the children fixed in my mind, as if they had been burned into my thoughts. It had been a long time since I had seen anything like it, and it probed at my darkest memories like the tip of a hot needle.

I took a deep breath and hardened myself, prepared myself to look once more. And when I was ready, I turned back to them.

The boy’s hair was as black as the winter night that moved through the trees, and his head was turned so that, were he alive, he would have been looking to the right side of the sled. But this boy saw nothing because his eyes were dry and dead and stared at only whatever comes after death.

Accompanying him on the sled was a girl. Her hair was long, frozen hard against her face and neck so her features were less visible. She was lying on her back, staring wide-eyed through the stiff strands of tangled hair. Her small, undernourished body was naked and pale, and I estimated she was no more than ten or eleven years old, just a few years older than my own daughter. There was a long and wide laceration from the top of her thigh to just above the knee. From one side to the other. The whole of the front of her thigh had been removed so the white of the bone was visible.

I had seen many wounds, but few like this. Wars did not fashion violence in this way. I was accustomed to the ragged shredding of explosions and the punctured flesh left by bullets, but these cuts were clean. Precise. And whenever I had seen injuries like these, they had been made with much darker intent than that of soldiers fighting soldiers.

‘Papa?’ Viktor’s voice cut into my thoughts. ‘What happened to them?’

I glanced at my son and shook my head.

‘So what do we do?’I went back to the man lying in the snow and crouched

beside him, staring down into his face, wondering who he was and why he had come here. ‘This man is dying,’ I said. ‘He needs our help. We should get him back.’

‘You mean take him back to the village? Is that safe? He might—’

‘If we leave him here he’ll die. Do you want that?’‘And what about them?’ Viktor inclined his head towards

the children. ‘What do we do with them?’‘We take them with us.’

Together, we pulled the man aboard the sled, mindful of the terrible cargo hidden beneath the tarpaulin. I hitched the reins around my waist and leaned my weight forward as we began the trek home. Soon my legs were burning with fatigue. I wasn’t getting younger, and my muscles were weakened by age and circumstance. I had lived just less than half a century and my bones and muscles were feeling the strain of the wear I’d forced on them.

Once we peaked the summit of the low hill, we could see Vyriv nestling in the shallow valley below, and as we began to descend, we saw smoke trailing and could already feel the warmth and the light the homes held within.

We moved into the village of only twenty or so buildings, many of which were now unoccupied. Some people had left because they couldn’t cope with the hardship, thinking life would be better in the cities, and some had moved on to Karkhiv or Kiev, others hoping to enter Russia. And there were those who had gone west, looking for Poland, going back to the place where I had fought not fifteen years ago when General Brusilov led the Russian army into disaster in Galicia. But now the country was being closed off. There was no way out.

Last year the government introduced collectivisation, and defined the kulak. The use of labour, ownership, the sale of surplus goods – these were all signs of a kulak. Any man who could afford to feed himself and his family was to give his property over to the state, and when people resisted in numbers, Stalin declared war on us and his great machine swept across the country, liquidating, collectivising and appropriating. Homes and possessions and people all now belonged to the state, leaving only three fates for the kulak – death, deportation or the labour camp.

It was as if we were simply waiting for execution or the march to the trains. We lived in constant fear of the soldiers’ arrival; of being forced into wagons and taken north to Siberia, south to Kazakhstan, packed so tight our feet wouldn’t touch the wooden floor. And already there were signs of hunger like there had been before the famine of 1921.

For those of us who still lived in Vyriv, there was nothing left but a slim hope of survival; a small chance to avoid

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The Child Thief

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starvation if we kept our heads bowed and remained there, unnoticed in the valley for as long as possible.

‘What do you think?’ asked Viktor as we walked. ‘Where’s he from? I mean, there’s nobody close. Uroz is the closest and that’s more than a day’s walk in this weather. And what do you think happened to them?’ He looked over at the shape of the tarpaulin. A range of hills in miniature, hiding something unspeakable beneath. ‘You think some kind of animal did that?’

‘Some kind.’ I kept my head down, staring at the ground beneath my feet.

‘Wolves?’‘No.’ Viktor sighed, his broad shoulders rising high as he drew

air into his lungs. ‘You think a person did it, don’t you? I’m old enough to know the truth.’

I lifted my head and stared at my son, and Viktor stared back as my equal. Viktor was wilful and determined, like me. He had inherited my obstinacy and, as he grew older, he was learning to apply it. ‘Yes, I think the wounds are man-made.’

‘It looks . . . well, it looks like an animal.’‘That was no animal. The cuts are too clean.’‘No. I mean it looks like when you butcher an animal.

When you take off the meat.’‘I’ve seen something like this before.’ I swallowed hard.

‘There are people,’ I said. ‘Desperate people who’ll do anything to survive. Hungry people. There were times – during the wars and the famine – when people would eat whatever they could. And there are bad people too, Viktor; people who’ve forgotten what it is to be human.’

Viktor shook his head and ran a hand across his mouth. ‘You think that man did that so he could . . . ?’

‘I don’t know. Him, someone else, I don’t know.’ ‘But they’re children. Is it safe to take him with us?

What do you—’‘I don’t know,’ I cut him short. ‘Wait until he can tell us

himself.’

Chapter 3

The heart of the village was a circular area now covered with snow that had drifted into the shallow valley on a bitter wind. And in the centre an oak stood old and hard and dark, unclothed for the winter. I had no idea what this village elder had witnessed through the years of war and revolution, but I knew this small collection of houses, close

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The Child Thief

to nowhere, had seen little of the bloodshed. The fighting on the eastern front had been far enough from here, and the revolution had happened in another world. The civil war had ridden past Vyriv, not noticing the tiny village crouched in the dip of the land. I had passed it myself without realising; marching down to the Crimea, the Black Army advancing to defeat another that called itself White. Even the famine of ten years ago had barely managed to rake its fingers across this small village. It was as if God turned the heads of men who passed it, so they looked away to the horizon. But the clouds were darkening now, and our great leader had dispatched his eyes and his ears to scour the land, and perhaps even God wouldn’t be able to blind those eyes.

For now the oak stood silent, refusing to give up its secrets, and as I passed it a thin memory of the summer came to me. A bayan accordion and a violin playing together, music drifting in the warm air. The women in their best dresses, singing to the breeze.

Close to the centre of the village, my home stood with open wooden gates hinged to a broken fence erected to define ownership in a past that allowed it. In more recent times it had become something to fall into disrepair or else it might denote the presence of a kulak.

As we made our way through the gate, dragging the sled, we saw shutters opening and cracks appearing in doorways as curious eyes looked out into the oncoming night.

We went to the front of the house and I unhitched myself and banged hard on the front door. ‘It’s us.’

Bolts were drawn back, and the door opened.Natalia’s cheeks were red and her dark eyes were

worried. ‘What’s going on? Are you all right? Where’s Viktor?’ Petro was standing behind her, holding a knife. My daughter Lara was by the table, her cousin Dariya beside her. Both girls looked excited and afraid at the same time.

‘Everything’s fine,’ I said, pulling down my scarf. ‘There’s a man, though; he needs our help.’

‘A man?’‘We need to get him inside.’ I looked over Natalia’s

shoulder at my daughter and her cousin. ‘What’s Dariya doing here? She should be at home.’ Dariya was a year younger than Lara, just eight years old, but she was bold and inquisitive, not afraid to speak her mind.

‘And miss this?’ Dariya said, coming forward. ‘It’s the most exciting thing to happen in years. Everything’s so boring.’ She was a little taller than Lara, despite being younger, and her manner was more confident. She had dark hair braided on either side, the plaits reaching her shoulders. She wore them so they fell across her chest.

‘Boring is how we like it,’ Natalia told her. ‘Boring is good.’

‘Boring is boring,’ Lara said.‘You’ve been listening to your cousin too much.’ Natalia

nodded to me and beckoned with her hands, telling me to bring the man into the house.

So Viktor and I lifted him between us and carried him to the door while Natalia snatched up some blankets and cushions and put them by the fire.

‘Put him here,’ she said. ‘It’s the warmest place. There’s a little food; you think he’ll eat?’

‘I don’t think he’ll do much of anything.’ We put him down and watched Natalia cover him with blankets.

‘Who is he?’ Dariya asked, squatting beside the man and peering into what she could see of his face. She put out a finger and poked him, but Natalia caught her hand and pulled her away.

‘Did you bring meat?’ she asked. ‘We have some mushroom soup, a little milk and oats, but, like this, a man needs meat.’

We set our rifles by the door and Viktor went for the rabbit we’d snared, coming back and handing it to his mother, holding it up by the ears.

‘This is it? A small rabbit? I send my husband and twin sons to find meat and they bring me one small rabbit and another mouth to feed?’ She took it in her fist and held it up to inspect it. ‘How do I feed a family with one rabbit?’

‘We have potatoes,’ I said. ‘A few beets.’‘And not much else.’‘Be thankful. The activists come here, we’ll have

nothing.’‘One rabbit.’ She shook her head and turned her attention

back to the man.‘Petro, stay with your mother.’ I touched Viktor’s

shoulder, indicating he should come with me.‘I can help you, Papa.’ Petro came forward but I shook

my head.‘I said stay with your mother.’ I looked at Petro for a

moment, softening my expression, but my son tightened his jaw and turned away. I sighed and stepped outside, pulling the door closed.

There were one or two men standing by their homes now, armed with pitchforks and sticks, and I knew they’d be worried about Petro’s warning, wondering if men had finally come to take their belongings. Sticks and farm implements would be no match for the rifles of a Red Army unit, but some of the men would fight with their bare hands if they had to.

I told Viktor to let them know everything was safe. ‘But don’t mention what’s under there.’ I glanced back at the sled. ‘Don’t tell them what else we found.’

‘Why not?’‘Because I don’t want to scare them. They’re scared

enough already.’Viktor nodded, and when the men saw him approach,

they began to wander out to meet him. I waited until there was a group of them, clustered in the twilight, then I went

35July 16th 201234 July 16th 2012


back into the house and closed the door behind me.The room was small but it was large enough for one

family. There was a table and a pich – the clay oven where Natalia did her cooking. There was a woven mat in front of the fire, a couple of chairs to soak the heat, and above the fire an obraz hung on the clay wall. The icon was unremarkable, just paint and wood, an image of the Virgin embracing her child. It had been in Natalia’s family for as long as she remembered, and the last time it had been taken from its position was when her mother lay dying, outliving her husband by just a few weeks, and she had held it in her fingers while she breathed her last.

The rushnyk draped over the top of the icon had also been in its place for many years because we’d had no reason to take it down. Before the revolution, the rushnyk was always on the table, put out to welcome guests. The colour of the embroidered flowers on the towel was a rich and deep red, and the family would display it with pride and put out bread and salt as an offering for visitors. But now it gathered dust and the flowers had faded. No one visited any more. No one trusted anyone now.

Already, Natalia had discarded the man’s scarf, opening his jacket and removing the clothing that would become damp now he was inside where it was warm. What I could see of his face was bright red, the blood resurrecting in his veins, but his cheeks and his chin were covered with a thick matting of beard that hid his mouth from view. The hair was clotted together in places, twisted and clumped.

‘I’ll have to take everything off him,’ Natalia said, looking up when I came in. Petro was standing beside her, still holding his knife, reluctant to let it go. Lara was sitting in one of the comfortable chairs, squeezed beside her cousin Dariya, both of them watching the man with curiosity. Lara jumped down and came over to me, putting her arms

around my waist and holding herself tight against me. I leaned down to kiss her hair.

‘Who is he, Papa?’ she asked.‘Is he one of them?’ Dariya said. ‘A twenty-five-

thousander?’Natalia and I shared a glance over the top of Lara’s

head.‘Where have you heard that?’ I asked.‘I don’t know. Someone was talking,’ Dariya said. ‘Some

of the men.’‘And you were listening in? There’s a word for children

like that,’ Natalia told her.‘They said they’re coming to take our land, is that right?’

Dariya asked.Word had reached the village about the party activists.

Twenty-five thousand young communists dispatched by Stalin, bringing with them the ranks of the Red Army and the political police, spreading out across the country, searching for anything of value, anything that could sustain life. Already there had been word of other villages garrisoned and occupied, families broken.

‘That’s not for you to worry about,’ I said. ‘You let the adults think about that.’

‘But when are they coming?’‘Perhaps they won’t come at all,’ Natalia told her. But we

knew they would reach Vyriv eventually. It was inevitable that some time soon the soldiers would look down into the shallow valley and see the smallholdings, and the purge would come.

‘But Papa said—’‘Enough, Dariya,’ Natalia stopped her. ‘We have other

things to think about right now.’ ‘You need to go home.’ I went to where Dariya was

sitting and squatted in front of the chair. ‘Your mama and

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papa will be worried about you.’‘Please, Uncle Luka.’I shook my head.Dariya pouted, but when I tickled her ribs she laughed

and knew she was beaten. I went to the door with her and waited for her to put on her boots before letting her out. ‘Straight home,’ I told her as she ran out into the cold.

I watched her go, then closed the door and headed to the room where we slept.

It was dark in there, but I could see well enough to find the chest of drawers that had once been white but was now a greyish colour. I opened the bottom drawer and looked at the few clothes folded into neat piles. Lara had one dress, the one she was wearing now, and there was another in here, ready for her when she grew into it. Beside it there were some clothes my boys had outgrown long ago, in a time when I hadn’t even known their faces; a time of bloodshed and filth.

I picked up a shirt, the material worn so thin I could barely feel it between my hardened fingers. There was still use in the clothes, but I needed something and they could be spared, so I took a pair of trousers to go with the shirt, tucked them both inside my coat, then slipped back into the adjoining room.

As I headed to the front door, Natalia spoke to me, asking, ‘Where are you going?’

She was leaning over the man by the fire. Lara was beside her, taking his clothes as her mother passed them back to her. He was wrapped in many layers, each one a surprise, as if, when they had all been peeled back, the man beneath would be nothing but a skeleton robed in slack skin and matted hair.

‘I have something to do,’ I said. ‘Outside.’Natalia continued to watch me for a moment and I

looked away so she couldn’t read me. When our gaze met again, I knew she had seen something in my eyes, stored it in her memory, ready to bring it out at a more appropriate moment. I nodded once to her, an understanding passing between us, then forced a smile and turned to the front door.

Outside, I dragged the sled around to the small barn behind the house. The sky was heavy with cloud, the moon failing to do much more than break the odd patch, but the ground was white and reflected what little light there was.

Pulling the barn doors wide, the smell of animals came out on a waft of warm air, and I hauled the sled inside. The cow watched from its stall, its dark eyes like glass.

I studied the tarpaulin, seeing its shape, knowing what was beneath the ice-encrusted material.

‘I can help,’ Viktor said, surprising me. ‘I didn’t hear you coming. You better close the doors,’ I

told him.While Viktor pulled the doors shut, I lit a lamp and hung

it from a nail on one of the supports. ‘You spoke to the others,’ I said.

Viktor came back and pulled down his scarf. ‘They wanted to see him, but I told them to wait until tomorrow.’

‘And they listened to you?’‘Of course.’I showed my son a rueful smile. ‘They listen to you. It’s

good.’Viktor gestured in the direction of the sled. ‘What are

you going to do?’I replied by taking the clothes from beneath my coat. ‘I

need to cover her.’‘You want me to do it?’ Viktor asked.‘We’ll do it together.’Viktor hesitated before reaching down to take the corner

of the tarpaulin and peel it back. I took the corner nearest to me and did the same, both of us moving the length of the sled so we could draw back the covering and whip it off.

I had to force myself to look at what lay beneath.

The Child Thief is available now from most good book stores. All work belongs to and is subject to copyright of Dan Smith.

Publisher: OrionFormat: Trade PaperpackRRP: £12.99Thanks to Orion for providing the sample.

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about The author

dAn smiThDan Smith grew up following his parents across the world to Africa, Indonesia and Brazil. He has been writing short stories for as long as he can remember and has been published in the anthology MATTER 4, shortlisted for the Royal Literary Fund mentor scheme, the Northern Writers Awards, the 2010 Brit Writers Published Author of the Year award and the Authors’ Club First Novel award. He lives in Newcastle with his family. Image ©Naomi Elderfield


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