Harry nodded.
'The guide came back the next day. He needed more money. Stefan went off in the car again. Four days later I awoke at the crack of dawn and saw Stefan. He must have been up all night. He lay as he usually did with his eyes half open and I could see his breath hanging in the frosty early-morning air. There was blood on his scalp and one lip was swollen. I picked up my blanket and went to the main station where a family of Kalderash gypsies had settled outside the toilets, waiting to travel westwards. I talked to the oldest of the boys. He told me that the man we thought was a schlepper was a local pimp who frequented the station area; he had offered his father thirty zloty for the two youngest boys. I showed the boy my blanket. It was thick and in good condition, stolen from a washing line in Lublin. He liked it. It would soon be December. I asked to see his knife. It was inside his shirt.'
'How did you know he had a knife?'
'All gypsies have knives. To eat with. Even members of the same family don't share cutlery–they can catch marime, an infection. But he made a good deal. His knife was small and blunt. Fortunately, I was able to get it sharpened at the smith's in the railway workshop.'
Raskol ran the long pointed nail on the little finger of his right hand across the bridge of his nose.
'That night, after Stefan had got into the car, I asked the pimp if he had a customer for me, too. He grinned and said I should wait. When he came back, I stood in the shadow under the bridge watching the trains moving in and out of the station area. "Come here, Sinti," he shouted. "I've got a good customer. A rich Party man. Come now, we haven't got much time!" I answered: "We have to wait for the Krakow train." He came over to me and grabbed my arm. "You've got to come now, do you understand?" I was no higher than his chest. "There it is," I said, pointing. He let me go and looked up. A procession of black steel wagons rolled past our pale faces as we stared up. Then the moment I was waiting for arrived. The screeching of steel against steel as the brakes bit. That drowned everything.'
Harry squinted, as if to make it easier to see if Raskol was lying.
'As the last wagons rolled slowly by I saw a woman's face staring at me from one of the windows. She looked like a ghost. Like my mother. I raised the bloodstained knife and showed her. And do you know what, Spiuni? That's the only time in my life when I have felt complete happiness.' Raskol closed his eyes as if to relive the moment. 'Koke per koke. A head for a head. That is the Albanian expression for blood vengeance. It's the best and the most dangerous intoxicant God gave to humanity.'
'What happened afterwards?'
Raskol opened his eyes again. 'Do you know what baxt is, Spiuni?'
'No idea.'
'Fate. Hell and karma. It's what governs our lives. When I took the pimp's wallet, there were three thousand zloty in it. Stefan returned and we carried the body across the rails and dumped it in one of the eastbound goods wagons. Then we went north. Two weeks later we sneaked onto a boat from Gdansk to Gothenburg. From there we went to Oslo and a field in Třyen where there were four caravans, three occupied by gypsies. The fourth was old and abandoned, with a broken axle. That was our home for five years. That Christmas Eve, we celebrated my ninth birthday there, with biscuits and a glass of milk under the one blanket we had left. On Christmas Day we broke into our first kiosk, and we knew we had come to the right place.' Raskol beamed. 'It was like taking candy from a baby.'
They sat in silence for a long while.
'You still don't look as if you believe me entirely,' Raskol said finally.
'Does that matter?' Harry asked.
Raskol smiled. 'How do you know Anna didn't love you?' he asked.
Harry shrugged.
* * *
Handcuffed to each other, they walked through the Culvert.
'Don't assume that I know who the robber is,' Raskol said. 'It could be an outsider.'
'I know,' Harry said.
'Good.'
'So, if Anna is Stefan's daughter and he lives in Norway, why didn't he go to the funeral?'
'Because he's dead. He took a tumble from a roof they were doing up several years ago.'
'And Anna's mother?'
'She moved south to Romania with her sister and brother when Stefan died. I don't have her address. I doubt she has one.'
'You told Ivarsson the reason the family didn't go to the funeral was that she had brought shame on them.'
'Did I?' Harry could see the amusement in Raskol's brown eyes. 'Would you believe me if I said I was lying?'
'Yes.'
'But I wasn't lying. Anna had been disowned by the family. She no longer existed for her father. He refused to mention her name. To prevent marime. Do you understand?'