In the bedside locker was a dark brown astrakhan coat with a turned collar and cuffs, elegantly fitted at the waist, and conspicuously moth-eaten, with bare patches down to the leather all along the back. She saw me examining it.

"You like this coat? You can heffit, Georgine."

"It's very nice but..."

It smelled of old cheese.

"Please. Tek it. I heff another. What's the matter-you don't like it?"

"...I think it's a bit small for me."

"Try. Try it."

I made a show of taking off my duffel coat, and trying to squeeze myself into it. It had a heavy satin lining torn under the armpits, with a sheen of grease around the b.u.t.tons and cuffs, but still it had a residual touch of luxury. Once, about fifty years ago, it had been a fabulous coat.

"It suits you good, darlink. Tek it. Is better than your coat."

True, my brown Bat Woman duffel coat, even in its 1985 heyday, had been in a lower league.

"It's lovely. Thank you. But look, it doesn't fit." I pretended to struggle with the b.u.t.tons.

"You must be more elegant, Georgine. And look at your shoes. Why you don't wear mit heels?"

"I'm sure you're right, Mrs Shapiro. But I like to be comfortable." I slipped my hands into the generously deep satin-lined pockets. "Where's the key?"

"Always in the pocket. You must be more elegant if you will catch a man, Georgine."

I rifled through the pockets. There was a disgusting snot-caked handkerchief with traces of dried blood, a box of matches, a cigarette b.u.t.t, a sticky boiled sweet with bits of fluff stuck to it, half a crumbled biscuit that had covered everything in greyish crumbs, and a pound coin. No key.

"Should be in there. Maybe is fallen in the leaning."

The key had slipped through a hole in the pocket, and was shaking around in the hem of the lining, along with a stub of black eyebrow pencil, two more cigarette b.u.t.ts, an apple core, and some loose change. I fished them all out through the hole and put them in the other pocket.

"Here it is. I'll have a look in your bureau and see if I can find something official to keep them happy."

"You must look only in the bureau. Not everywhere poking, Georgine." She was smoothing the bedclothes with a nervous movement. "Darlink, I am worrying about the Wonder Boy. If you go to my house, you will please put some food for him? Other cats can catch, but this poor boy he is always hungry. And next time you come, Georgine, you bring some cigarettes mit you, okay?"

"I don't think smoking is allowed in hospital, Mrs Shapiro."

"Nothing is allowed." She breathed a dramatic sigh. "Only sleeping and eating sossedge."

In the next bed, the woman with the oxygen mask had started to make a horrible gurgling noise. A couple of nurses rushed up, and drew the curtain around the bed. The gurgling continued. There was a clatter of instruments, and low voices talking urgently.

"You heff to get me out, Georgine." Mrs Shapiro gripped my wrist again. "Place is full of krankies. Everybody dying."

I stroked her hand until her grip relaxed. "You'll be home soon. Would you like me to bring you anything?"

She gave me an appealing look.

"If you could bring the Wonder Boy..."

"I don't think they allow pets in here." Especially not Wonder Boy, I was thinking, with his disgusting habits. "What about your photo of Artem? Would you like to have it with you? I'm sure they'd allow that."

She shook her head. "Too many teefs in here. But Wonder Boy n.o.body will steal."

Well, she was right about that. Rather than getting drawn into a plan to smuggle Wonder Boy into the hospital, I changed the subject, thinking maybe reminiscence would settle her, for old people often feel more at home in the past than in the present. And I was curious to know the end of the story she'd started to tell me that night over the fish dinner, twisted up in her convoluted English.

"You never finished telling me the story about Artem. How he got to England. How you met."

Letting go of my wrist she sank back on to her pillow.

"It is a long megillah megillah, Georgine."

"You said he ran away to join the partisans in the forest."

"Yes, in Naliboki. Almost six months he was living mit the Pobeda partisans."

Shlomo Zorin and his Pobeda band of partisans had set up a family camp along the same lines as the Bielski camp in a clearing in the vast Naliboki forest in Belarus. Here they sheltered any Jews who made their way there, and even sent scouts back into the ghettoes to organise escapes. Artem Shapiro undertook several of these missions, using stolen papers; his bright blond hair, inherited from his grandfather, allowed him to pa.s.s himself off as a Christian.

"Such a beautiful blondi, he was. He could pa.s.s easy." Mrs Shapiro's voice wavered. "So one day he made his journey back to Minsk."

Early in the autumn, while there was still plenty to eat in the woods and before the snows started, Artem set out to find his mother and sisters, thinking to lead them back to the forest with him. But the Minsk ghetto, when he arrived, seemed like a ghost town of living skeletons shuffling around the once-familiar streets with death in their eyes. He learned from a former neighbour that his mother was dead-she had died of starvation, or maybe of a broken heart, shortly after he had been taken away. One of his sisters had died of typhus. No one knew what had happened to the other sister. Someone told him that she'd been taken to Auschwitz; someone else told him that she'd used her mother's gold teeth to bribe a local brigand, and had got away, "To Sweden. Or mebbe to England."

After that visit to Minsk, something broke apart inside Artem's heart. All the music died. A terrible chorus of wailing filled his head night and day, so he could neither sleep nor work nor think. In a situation where morale is crucial, he felt himself becoming a drag on the Pobeda camp, undermining everyone's spirits with his own misery. One morning, after a night of wailing dreams, he smashed his violin against a tree. Then he said goodbye to Zorin and headed eastwards through the silent snow-laden forests towards his birthplace at Orsha. Maybe he was hoping to make contact with surviving members of his family, but when he arrived in the spring of 1942 the Orsha ghetto had already been liquidated. Thousands of Jews had been shot and the remainder had been herded on to freight trains.

"They put them on the trains but they been transported to nowhere. They been poisoned where they waited, in the wagons. The Russian prisoners dug up a ma.s.s grave and buried them." She paused. Her breath came slow and rattly. "Truly they wanted to kill us all."

Artem did not return to Zorin. Such a fury possessed him that simply surviving in the forest was no longer enough. The chorus of wailing resolved itself into a single long howl-the howl of a wounded animal ready to kill. He headed north to join up with a group of Russian partisans who were harrying the German army, which had by now encircled Leningrad. The first time he ambushed a German jeep with a tree felled across the road, he taunted them with savage delight: "Ich bin der ewigejude!"

"Shut up that nonsense!" bawled Velikov, the commander of the unit, "just shoot!"

The partisans were trying to open up a supply route into the beleaguered city. It was a dangerous mission, for the German grip on Leningrad and the Finnish corridor was almost total, but by early 1943 Meretskov had brought the front forward from the east, and a few supplies started to get through. Artem was with a group of partisans who were driving a sleigh loaded with potatoes and beet across the frozen Lake LaG.o.da when they came under fire from a German patrol. The other three perished instantly, along with their stubby-legged Mongolian pony, but Artem was only wounded in the shoulder. He knew that running away over the ice in winter would be certain death; instead he crawled into the sleigh, hid under the wolfskins which covered the beets, and waited for his destiny to catch up with him. Either the Germans would take him, or the Russians would rescue him, or he would freeze to death. Everyone knows that hypothermia is a pleasant drowsy death. At least I won't die of hunger, he thought. He waited and listened, trying to staunch his wound with a cloth wrapped around a lump of ice. He could hear shooting and voices calling, but they seemed to be getting further away, not closer.

Then started the snow to fall.

He must have fainted or drifted off to sleep, for he lost track of how long he'd lain there, when he was jerked into sudden consciousness by a sharp jolt of the sleigh. He peeped from under the snow-heavy wolfskins, and saw that it had been harnessed to what he thought was another pony that was trotting over the ice into the whirling blizzard. Seated above and behind him, he could hear two men talking. He caught the sound of laughter and a whiff of cigarette smoke. Were they talking German or Russian? He couldn't tell.

"And all this time the pony was walking in the snow and the ice, and the snow was falling all the time, and the pony was walking on in the freezing snow and on and on over the ice and on and on..."

She stopped. I waited for her to continue. I thought she must be remembering and maybe she found the memories too painful to talk about. But after a while I heard a gentle snoring and I realised she'd fallen asleep.

"When do you think Mrs Shapiro might be able to come home?" I asked the sister at the desk on my way out.

"It's too early to say. We'll see how she gets on," she replied without looking up.

"But it's only a broken wrist, isn't it?"

"I know, but we'll have to a.s.sess her home situation. We don't want her to go back and have another fall. At her age, she might be better off in residential care."

"Why, how old is she?"

"She told us she was ninety-six." She looked up. Our eyes met, and mine must have betrayed my astonishment. "Isn't she your gran?"

"No, she's just a neighbour. I live a couple of streets away. I don't really know her that well."

Could Mrs Shapiro really be ninety-six? But why would she lie about her age?

"Another reason it'd be useful to have some ID."

8.

Biopolymer I spotted Wonder Boy lurking in the porch of Canaan House as I walked up the path. He was ripping the guts out of a bird he'd caught-it looked like a starling. It was still alive, struggling between his paws. Feathers were everywhere. He bolted off into the bushes as he saw me coming, the bird still flapping in his jaws. This cat can well take care of himself, I thought. Usually I'm fond of cats but there was something horrible about Wonder Boy. I tried to imagine catching him, stuffing him in a bag, and taking him on the bus to the hospital. No way. spotted Wonder Boy lurking in the porch of Canaan House as I walked up the path. He was ripping the guts out of a bird he'd caught-it looked like a starling. It was still alive, struggling between his paws. Feathers were everywhere. He bolted off into the bushes as he saw me coming, the bird still flapping in his jaws. This cat can well take care of himself, I thought. Usually I'm fond of cats but there was something horrible about Wonder Boy. I tried to imagine catching him, stuffing him in a bag, and taking him on the bus to the hospital. No way.

The key Mrs Shapiro had given me was only a Yale, in fact any enterprising burglar could have just smashed the frosted gla.s.s and put his hand through to turn the lock. I pushed the door open against a heap of mail that had piled up on the inside. As soon as I stepped into the hall the stink hit me, a bitter must of cat pee, damp and rot. I put my handkerchief up to my nose. Out of nowhere, Violetta materialised around my ankles, mewing pitifully. Poor thing-she must have been locked in the house for at least three days. I picked up the mail and flicked through it in case there was anything that needed attention, but it all seemed to be junk. There was even an offer for a Salisbury's Nectar Card.

I followed Violetta through to the kitchen. A chaos of dirty plates, dead cups with remains of disgusting brown fluids, empty tins and greasy ready-meals packaging was spread across every grimy surface. In a cracked pot sink under the window, a stack of unwashed dishes and congealed food remnants was soaking in sc.u.mmy water on to which a cold tap was drip-drip-dripping. The gas cooker was crusted with dark brown grunge, and so old that it had levers instead of k.n.o.bs. There was an Aga, but it was unlit and seemed to be used for storing old newspapers. A dank mouldy chill pervaded everything. I shivered. Even in my warm duffel coat I was cold.

I hunted around and found a dozen cat-food tins in a cupboard. I spooned some out into a bowl for Violetta and she wolfed it down, almost choking in her desperation. Then I unlocked the back door-the key was on the inside-filled the bowl, and put it out on the step. Wonder Boy appeared, hissed at Violetta, batted her out of the way, and polished it off. A few other scrawny moggies were hanging around too. I fed them all-there must have been a good half-dozen of them, miaowing and rubbing themselves against me. A couple of them sneaked indoors between my legs. I locked the kitchen door and returned to the house.

The bureau Mrs Shapiro had been talking about was in a downstairs room which could have been a study. The window had been boarded up behind drawn curtains, so the only light was from a lone surviving candle-bulb in the heavy gilt candelabra that cast a feeble glow over the old-fashioned floral wallpaper, floor-to-ceiling bookcases, Persian rugs, and a tiled fireplace above which an ornate ormolu mirror would have reflected the blocked-out view over the garden. Even in the gloomy light I could see it was a lovely room. The smell was different, too, musky and dusty, with only a faint trace of cat pee. There was a spoon back armchair and two desks-a mahogany kneehole desk by the window, and a tall oak bureau-bookcase in an alcove beside the chimney breast.

I decided to start here. I have to confess that, even then, Ms Firestorm was looking over my shoulder and whispering in my ear, there must be a story here-maybe a better story than The Splattered Heart The Splattered Heart.

The bureau was full of papers, mostly bills in the name of Naomi Shapiro, and some, the older ones, in the name of Artem Shapiro, and bank statements from a joint-name account. The most recent of these, to my astonishment, showed a balance of just over 3,000. The oldest I could find dated back to 1948. There was, it seemed, a small monthly income from an annuity, as well as Mrs Shapiro's widow's pension going into the bank. I took a selection of statements at random; would these give the hospital the information they needed? In the same drawer, held together with a rubber band, was a bundle of receipts including one for 25, dated 26th October from Felicity NU2U Dress Agency, and one dated i6 October from Felicity NU2U Dress Agency, and one dated i6th October for 23 from P. Cochrane, Antique and Secondhand Emporium, New North Road. That explained the pram. October for 23 from P. Cochrane, Antique and Secondhand Emporium, New North Road. That explained the pram.

There must be something else, I thought, something personal to show a date or place of birth, of baptism or marriage, education or employment. You can't live a whole life that's only recorded through bills and receipts. The kneehole desk was crammed full of stationery, crumpled notepaper, dried up pens and stubs of pencils, receipts, old tickets, train timetables years out of date, a library card, also out of date, and a.s.sorted out-of-date leaflets about pensions and benefits: the useless bits of officialdom we cart with us through life. One drawer housed a correspondence with the Council about the monkey puzzle tree, which Mrs Shapiro had wanted to cut down, although apparently it had a tree preservation order on it.

In the last drawer there was a thick brown envelope stuffed with official-looking papers. This was what I'd been searching for. An odd-looking pa.s.sport, light blue with a black stripe on one corner. Artem Shapiro; date of birth i3th March 1904; place of birth Orsha; date of issue 4th March 1950, London. Ration book: Artem Shapiro 1947. Driving licence: Artem Shapiro 1948. Abbey National Life Insurance plan, Artem Shapiro 1958. Death certificate: Artem Shapiro 1960; cause of death: cancer of the lung. Knowing his story, I felt a special tug of intimacy as I turned the flimsy typewritten paper over in my hands. So that was how his journey ended: the ghetto, the barbed-wire camp, the silent forests, the ice-bound lake. I folded the death certificate and put it back, hoping he'd died in his sleep, cosseted with morphine. March 1950, London. Ration book: Artem Shapiro 1947. Driving licence: Artem Shapiro 1948. Abbey National Life Insurance plan, Artem Shapiro 1958. Death certificate: Artem Shapiro 1960; cause of death: cancer of the lung. Knowing his story, I felt a special tug of intimacy as I turned the flimsy typewritten paper over in my hands. So that was how his journey ended: the ghetto, the barbed-wire camp, the silent forests, the ice-bound lake. I folded the death certificate and put it back, hoping he'd died in his sleep, cosseted with morphine.

But what about her? A Co-op savings book was the only doc.u.ment that had her name on it. Mrs N. Shapiro rjth July 1972. There has to be something else, I thought; and I remembered what she'd said-you only look in bureau. So if anything had been deliberately hidden, I wouldn't find it here.

In a frenzy of curiosity, I poked through the other rooms. The sideboard in the dining room where I'd eaten the death-defying fish dinner yielded nothing but plates and cutlery. The sitting room was dark, the windows boarded up, and the light switch didn't work. I'd need a torch to search in here. Under the staircase, behind the pram, a narrow door opened on to a stone stair leading down to the bas.e.m.e.nt. A wave of trapped musty air rose up towards me. I felt with my hand along the wall for the light switch, and a fluorescent strip light juddered into life, flickering madly on and off, plunging the low-ceilinged room alternately into light and pitch darkness.

It seemed to be some kind of workshop. A gla.s.s-fronted cabinet was fixed to the wall with rows of tools neatly arranged, the blades now tarnished with rust. Below it was a workbench with a variety of clamps. Bits of strangely carved wood were hanging from hooks. I realised after a few moments that they were panels and necks of unfinished violins. There was a pot of dried-up glue, a small dried-up brush sticking out of it. The glue was clear and amber-coloured, still exuding a faint sickly whiff. Animal glue. Bio-polymer. Used for woodworking, veneers and inlays, until better modern synthetic glues came along.

My boss Nathan once told me that the n.a.z.is had made glue from human bones. Lampshades from human skin; mattresses stuffed with human hair. Nothing wasted. I was beginning to feel dizzy. Maybe it was the strobe effect of the faulty fluorescent tube, or the memories trapped in the ghost-breathed air.

I made my way back up the stone stairs. As my fingers felt for the light switch I turned back towards the workshop, and that's when I saw a flash of colour on top of the tool cabinet-a couple of millimetres of blue just visible above the architrave. Curious, I went back down and pulled up a chair to have a look. It was an oblong tin, a bit rusty, with a picture of Harlech Castle surrounded by an improbably blue Welsh sky. I lifted it down and eased it open. It was the sort of tin that would once have held toffees or shortbread biscuits, but all it had in it now was a few photographs. I slipped it under my arm and went back up into the light.

From the hall, a wide staircase with a curved mahogany banister led up to the first floor. As I mounted the treads, still clutching the tin, a threadbare Axminster carpet secured by bra.s.s rods released clouds of dust under my feet. The same mahogany handrail galleried the first-floor landing, and nine doors opened off it. One of them was slightly ajar. I pushed it open. A scurry of movement. Two lean stray cats bolted out between my legs. The room was large and light, with a double window overlooking the front garden, and dominated by a ma.s.sive art-deco walnut double bed on which a tattered-eared tomcat-he had the same moth-eaten look as Mrs Shapiro's astrakhan coat-was curled up asleep. Raising his s.h.a.ggy head he followed me with his eyes as I came in. The stench in here was terrible. Phew! I opened a window. "Shoo! Shoo! p.i.s.s off!" I tried to chase him out but he just looked at me with contempt. Eventually he uncurled himself, jumped down from the bed flicking his tail grumpily from side to side, and sauntered towards the door.

This, I guessed, was Mrs Shapiro's bedroom, for her clothes were scattered everywhere-the Scotch plaid baker boy cap, the peep-toe high heels, and on the floor by the bed a pair of peach camiknickers trimmed with cream lace, a faint stain yellowing the silk. The walnut wardrobe, carved with art-deco sunbursts, was full of clothes on satin-padded hangers, reeking of moth-b.a.l.l.s, stylish and expensive like costumes in a Humphrey Bogart movie. A matching sunburst dressing table stood in one corner, with a triple hinged mirror facing the window through which I had a view of the garden. I rifled through layers of ancient decomposing make-up and musty, slightly stinky underwear. There was nothing of interest, so I sat down on the edge of the bed, opened the Harlech Castle tin, and spread out the six photographs.

Most were in black and white, but the top one was in sepia, creased and tattered at the edges. It was a family portrait from the turn of the century: the mother in a lace-collared dress cradling a baby, the other arm round the shoulder of the father with a beard and a tall hat, and two children, a little girl wearing a flouncy dress and a strikingly blond toddler in white pantaloons and an embroidered shirt. There was writing on the back that didn't seem to make sense. Until I realised it was in Cyrillic script. All I could make out was the date: 1905. He must have carried it with him, hidden in a pocket or a lining, all that way.

Next, a wedding photograph caught my eye: a tall man, fair and handsome, grasping the hand of a pretty woman with ardent eyes and thick curly black hair pinned up beneath a crown of white blossom. They were gazing out of the photograph, wide-eyed, half smiling, as though taken by surprise at their own happiness. The man I recognised as Artem Shapiro. But who was the woman? An attractive heart-shaped face with wide-set dark eyes and a full, generous mouth. I studied it carefully, for people's faces do change as they age, but, really, there could be no doubt. The woman in the photo was not Naomi Shapiro.

I was still staring at the photo when suddenly I heard a sound outside in the garden-voices, and the clack of the gate. My heart thumped. Quickly I slipped the photos into my bag, closed the tin and shoved it on top of the wardrobe out of sight. In one of the panes of the triple mirror I could see a reflection of the window and, through it, the garden. A man and a woman were standing on the path; they were standing and gazing at the house. The woman was a stout redhead, wearing a vivid green jacket; the man was stocky and red-cheeked, wearing a blue parka, smoking a cigarette. The man stubbed his cigarette out on the path and spoke to the woman. I couldn't catch his words, but I saw her toothy laugh. By the time I came down to the door they'd gone.

9.

Rubber There was a different nurse on duty when I went back up to the hospital next time. She examined the papers I showed her without comment, ticked a box on Mrs Shapiro's notes, and pa.s.sed them back to me.

"How's she doing?" I asked.

"Fine. She'll be ready to go as soon as we can get her home a.s.sessment done." She flicked through the notes. "I understand you have the key to her house. I'll get Mrs Goodknee to ring you for an appointment."

Mrs Goodknee again. I imagined someone in a miniskirt with chubby dimpled knees.

Mrs Shapiro was sitting up in bed, her hair combed back tidily, the hospital nightgown, antiseptic green, b.u.t.toned up to her throat. She seemed well; the stay in hospital had fattened her up. Her cheeks were rosy and her eyes looked bluer-yes, her eyes were definitely blue.

"h.e.l.lo. You look good, Mrs Shapiro. Are they feeding you well? Are they still making you eat sausages?"

"Not sossedge. Now is better. Now is chickens and fry pottetto. Did you bring the Wonder Boy?"

"I tried, but he ran away," I lied.

I wanted to ask her about the photographs, but I held back because I didn't want to admit that I'd been rifling through her house and had discovered the hidden tin. I would have to find another way of worming the story out of her.

We sipped the thick, bitter tea that came around on the trolley and munched our way through the box of chocolates I'd brought in my role as next of kin.

"Mrs Shapiro, I'm worried that your house is...well...don't you think it's a bit big for you to manage? Wouldn't you be happier in a nice cosy flat? Or in a home where you'd have someone to look after you?"

She looked at me with wide-eyed horror, as though I'd put a curse on her.

"Why for you say this to me, Georgine?"

I couldn't find polite words to explain my concern about the smell and the grunge and the crumbling fabric of the house, so I just said, "Mrs Shapiro, the nurse thinks you might be too old to live on your own." I studied her face. "She told me you're ninety-six."

Her mouth twitched. She blinked. "I am not going nowhere."

"Mrs Shapiro, how old are you really?"