The Forest of Souls

by Carla Banks

  The traffic was heavy all the way, and it was almost nine by the time she got to the university. There was a queue for the car park and she was tempted to look for a space on the street, but she wanted a fighting chance of seeing her car again. The rain was falling hard by the time she managed to park. She could feel the rain dripping off her umbrella and trickling down inside her collar as she hurried across campus to the Edwardian façade of the Centre for European Studies. She pushed open the glass doors and entered the lobby, blinking the rain out of her eyes.

  The warmth of the building enclosed her with its smell of new carpet and paint. The soothing murmur of activity filled the air, a subdued clatter from keyboards, the distant sound of doors opening and closing, the clunk and hum of the lift. She paused on her way through the lobby to catch her breath, and looked at the display boards. Amongst all the fliers for conferences in Madrid, Paris, and New York there was a glossy poster for the forthcoming Brandt Memorial Lecture. Antoni Yevanov: ‘After Guantanamo–International Law from Nuremberg to the 21st Century’. She made a note in her diary. She wanted to go to that.

  A group of post-grad students were clustered outside the library. They looked across at her and smiled. Faith had given her first lecture the week before, and her face was becoming known. One of them, a tall young man with fair hair, detached himself from the group and came across. He said rather diffidently, ‘Faith, have you got any time today? Could I come and see you?’

  She gave him a shrewd look, pretty sure what he wanted. She recognized him now: Gregory Fellows, one of the stars of the post-grad intake. He was due to deliver a seminar on his work to the group who monitored and evaluated research carried out under the auspices of the Centre. He was very bright, but most of his energies, Faith had been reliably informed, were focused on his work as a drum and bass artist. She was pretty sure he was looking for a postponement of the seminar. He’d need a good excuse. ‘My office time is at three,’ she said. ‘I can see you then.’

  His face fell. ‘I wasn’t planning on being in all day,’ he said. ‘I don’t suppose you could…’

  ‘Three o’clock,’ Faith said. He gave her a wry smile of acceptance and she hurried up the stairs, aware that it was already after nine. She unlocked the door of her office, puzzled at Helen’s absence. She was only a few minutes late. She phoned Helen’s extension, but there was no reply.

  Helen worked in one of the small cubicles on the other side of the building. All the research assistants were based down there–one of them might know where she was. Faith went along the corridor, her progress snagging on people who wanted to talk to her, either to set up meetings or to lobby her support for various projects that were being discussed that afternoon. She fielded these as diplomatically as she could, and asked if anyone had seen Helen, but no one had.

  Helen’s cubicle was empty. The desk was tidy, the computer shut down. There was no coat on the hook, no bag under the desk. A photograph on the side of the computer made a splash of colour. Faith looked at it. It showed Helen, her eyes screwed up against the light, with her arms round her two children, Hannah, small and dark-haired like her mother, and the taller, more solemn Finn.

  There was a pile of books on the desk–presumably in preparation for the meeting. Faith glanced through them; they were all standard texts about the role of women in National Socialism, except for one. The Memorial Book of Mir. Mir?

  But no Helen. She checked the time. It was well after nine. She tried calling Helen’s home number but there was no reply. Then she tried Helen’s mobile. It was engaged. Faith let out a breath of frustration. She scribbled a note on a yellow post-it and stuck it on the monitor, then went back downstairs to the secretary’s office. She wanted to check the teaching schedules.

  Trish Parry, Antoni Yevanov’s secretary, glanced up when Faith came through her door. ‘Can I help you?’ Her voice was cool. She had been unfriendly and obstructive from the day Faith arrived. Faith assumed it was to do with the fact that she had been given the job, rather than the internal candidate, but Helen had offered an alternative explanation. ‘She’s okay with the men. It’s the women she doesn’t like. She thinks they’re rivals for Yevanov’s affections.’

  ‘You mean she and Yevanov…?’ It seemed unlikely to Faith, though Trish was certainly attractive in a neat, English rose sort of way.

  Helen grinned. ‘In Trish’s dreams,’ she said.

  ‘Have you seen Helen Kovacs?’ she said to Trish now.

  Trish barely looked up. ‘Not this morning. She said she might not be in. Something about an appointment.’

  ‘Has she phoned?’ It wasn’t like Helen to leave people in the lurch.

  Trish shrugged. ‘She mentioned it yesterday afternoon. Before she left. Early.’

  Faith couldn’t understand why Helen hadn’t contacted her, unless…maybe she’d been relying on Trish, and Trish hadn’t bothered to pass the message on. ‘Did she ask you to let me know?’

  ‘Caroline deals with things like that, not me,’ Trish said coolly.

  Faith didn’t say anything. Technically, Trish was in the right. There was a procedure for reporting absences. She made a mental note to warn Helen not to give Trish ammunition, and looked at her watch. She might as well start work on the article. If she left at ten thirty, she should get to Grandpapa’s by eleven, just about.

  ‘Let me know if Helen phones,’ she said. ‘I’ll be in my room.’

  ‘Just a minute.’ Trish picked up the phone and keyed in a number. ‘Professor Yevanov, I’ve got Faith Lange here.’ She listened, then said, ‘She isn’t in. Again.’ Another pause. ‘Are you sure? Faith can give me the–’ Her eyes narrowed slightly as they moved to Faith. ‘Yes. I’ll tell her.’ She put the phone down abruptly. ‘He wants to see you,’ she said.

  ‘Now?’ Faith was surprised. Since her arrival, Yevanov had been devoting his time to his ongoing commitments in Europe, and was rarely available. Faith’s contact with him had been minimal.

  ‘Of course not. He can see you this afternoon at one.’

  Faith raised her eyebrows slightly at Trish’s tone. ‘One o’clock then.’

  As she headed back to her room, she tried Helen’s mobile again, but this time it was switched off.

  The 999 call came in at 8.45 a.m. The operator listened to the crackling line, and repeated her message. ‘Emergency. Which service?’ There was no response, just the hiss that told her the line was open. The call was coming through on a cell phone–probably stuffed in someone’s bag or pocket without the keypad locked. She wished the people who did this knew about the time and the money it cost when…

  But now she could hear something. A hitching, gasping sound as though someone was out of breath after running, or…frightened, the panicky sound of someone who couldn’t get their breath but was trying not to be heard. ‘Emergency,’ she said again. She kept her voice calm and level. ‘Can you tell me where you are? I need to know where you are.’

  The gasping breath again, then a voice tense with strain. ‘I–’ There was a clatter as though the phone had been dropped.

  The line cut out.

  3

  Jake Denbigh came out of the shower drying his hair. He wrapped the towel round his waist and headed for the kitchen area, checking the fax as he passed it.

  He switched on the coffee machine and put a couple of oranges through the juicer. His head was aching. He’d been up late the night before–Cass had dropped in. They’d shared a bottle of wine, then opened another, and later she’d experimented with the girder that ran up through the centre of the flat–a warehouse conversion on the river–trying out its potential for pole dancing. Evenings with Cass tended to be strenuous.

  He turned on the radio, listening with half an ear as he poured out cereal and pressed the button on the espresso, letting an inch of rich, dark coffee trickle into the cup. The news was typical for the times–trouble in the Middle East, renewed terrorist activity–Jake sometimes thought that if the human race ha
d an overwhelming talent, it was the capacity to make an already difficult life even harder, often in the name of some uncertain glory to come. Jake had no problems with the idea of an afterlife–he thought that a universe that contained Jake Denbigh was a better place than a universe that didn’t, but in the meantime, he planned to enjoy the life that he had.

  He flicked the switch on the radio to get the local news. A Manchester United story was running as lead, followed by an armed robbery the night before. Nothing that interested him. He took the papers out of the fax and flicked through them–notification that his visa for Belarus was through and his passport was in the post. That was a relief. He’d been worried his plans were going to be held up by the bureaucracy of the last Stalinist state. The rest weren’t urgent–he put them in his in-tray for later. He switched on his computer, and got out his tape recorder and mike. He checked the batteries, spares, tape supply and recording levels. He had an interview later that morning.

  Jake made his living as a writer and journalist. He’d lived in Manchester for two years now, brought there by a regular slot on a radio programme that was produced in the city, and a weekly column with the local paper, a current affairs piece with a European slant. These days, his interests were shifting more and more towards writing. Broadcasting was good–it got his name out there and he enjoyed it–but it was sound-bite analysis and he was finding its black-and-white simplicity frustrating. He’d published a book on the Rwandan genocides a year ago, looking at the historical impetus behind the horror. It had done well, and now he was seriously researching a second book, this one focusing on the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe.

  He checked his e-mail. There was a message from Cass–she must have sent it when she got back the night before. He frowned. She’d taken a risk sending that from home. Cass lived with someone, and the last thing Jake wanted was for that relationship to go up in smoke for what was, after all, just a casual fling for both of them.

  He opened her message and gave a half-smile as he read it: Was that Pole-ish enough for you? His current commission was about as Polish as it got. He was writing a series of articles for a monthly journal on immigration into the UK. The final one, which he was currently researching, looked at the experience of wartime immigrants. He’d put the story of the Jewish immigrants to one side–that warranted an article of its own–and instead focused on the Eastern Europeans: émigré Poles, Russians, Latvians, Lithuanians, Estonians. A motley crew, some of whom had made their escape after the Nazi invasion and fought on the side of the Allies, others who had survived the occupation and had arrived after the end of hostilities. He’d spent the last few days interviewing old men, teasing the information he wanted from the welter of disconnected recollections.

  Jake’s interest in the occupation of Eastern Europe had begun a few months ago when he’d covered a story about a Lithuanian refugee called Juris Ziverts. Ziverts had been accused of collaboration in the Holocaust, and Jake had befriended the old man. Now, months later, two things stuck in his mind. One was the level of ignorance that existed about the events of Eastern Europe in the last war. The other was the man Ziverts himself.

  On Jake’s desk next to his computer was a wooden cat. It was black, half-crouching with its tail raised. It was a replica of one of the statues from the roof of the Cat House in Riga. Ziverts had carved it from memory as a memento of the city he had left behind. He had given it to Jake on their last meeting, pushing it towards him with emphatic nods. It was a gift, made in thanks, though what Ziverts thought he had to be grateful for, Jake didn’t know.

  He stood watching the early light on the water, his eyes narrowed in thought, then he shrugged, and sat down at the desk. The clock on his monitor told him it was seven twenty-nine–a minute before his planned start to the working day. He had an interview at eleven with Marek Lange, a Polish expatriate whose story should be interesting. Pole-ish enough…

  Most people thought of the émigrés as lumpen factory fodder. Jake knew the stereotype–vodka-swilling, brutal and stupid. In fact, they had entered British society at all levels: artists, scholars, teachers, philosophers, entrepreneurs–and criminals. The country they had chosen to make their home was substantially different because they had come here. Lange was the archetype of the entrepreneur, and Jake needed his story. But, as always happened with any project that had gone smoothly, the last bit was proving the most difficult.

  Setting up the interview had been hard enough. Lange didn’t answer his phone and didn’t respond to messages. But something must have got through, because suddenly Jake had Lange’s daughter on the phone who had told him brusquely that her father did not want to be involved. Jake had been planning to give up on Lange–there were other people who would fit the profile he wanted–but this opposition aroused his interest. He’d been prepared to persist, but then Lange himself had phoned, apologizing for his earlier silence and agreeing to an interview. Maybe the daughter had been laying the law down there as well, in which case, Jake owed her thanks. He opened the relevant file on his screen and read through the information he’d managed to get hold of:

  Marek Lange

  Born: 1923

  Place of birth: Litva, Poland

  Father: Stanislau Lange

  Mother: Kristina Lange

  Arrived in UK 1943. Joined Polish Free Forces Marital history: married 1955, divorced, 1961. Ex-wife died, 1963

  Children: Katya Lange, born 1959

  He tapped his fingers on the desk. There was plenty of material relating to Lange’s interests after his arrival in the UK, the period he wanted for the article. Jake would have no problems writing a gung-ho profile of a man who’d acquitted himself bravely in the last years of the war and had worked hard and successfully afterwards. But his life before 1943 was frustratingly vague. And this part of Lange’s story might tie in very well with the new book Jake had embarked on shortly after his first meeting with Juris Ziverts.

  Ziverts’ dilemma had opened Jakes eyes to the other refugees, those who had arrived quietly, camouflaged among the thousands who were trying to escape the chaos of Europe and rebuild their shattered lives, those whose papers were in suspiciously good order, and who talked little about their past. These were the people with something to hide and it was their stories that Jake wanted.

  Eastern Europe had suffered under the sway of two ideologies: Stalinism and fascism. The storm that had erupted when the two systems collided had been terrifying in its intensity and its brutality. Thirteen million people had died in the war years alone. The millions who had died under Stalin had never been accurately counted, and the majority of the perpetrators had never been brought to book.

  Jake didn’t want to write about the lost chance for justice–victors’ justice, many would have said. He wanted to tell the story of the human cost. His work had given him access to the people who had lived with the Soviet behemoth to the east and the rising darkness of fascism to the west. He needed a hook on which to hang his story, and Juris Ziverts had led him to it: the story of Minsk.

  Minsk, a city with a history going back to medieval times, had suffered the worst that both regimes could offer. North of the city, on its outskirts, was the Kurapaty Forest, where 900,000 people had been systematically slaughtered by Stalin’s soldiers. And the city itself had been devastated by the Nazi occupation. By the time the Nazis were driven out, a quarter of the population was dead.

  Belarus, or Byelorussia, or Belarussia–it was a country with more names than a fugitive. He’d dug around a bit. And he had unearthed a Belarusian émigré living in Manchester. Sophia Yevanova was an invalid who had been housebound for several years. He’d gone to see her with no great expectations. What could an ailing babushka have to tell him? But he had come away from their first meeting captivated and enthralled, as had, he suspected, every man who had crossed Sophia Yevanova’s path for most of her seventy-five years.

  Illness confined her to her room in the spacious old house she shared with her son, the emin
ent historian, Antoni Yevanov. She was sharp, she was witty, she was unnerving and she was beautiful, and she had woven stories for him that had captivated him for far longer than the hour he had assigned to the meeting. She was from Minsk, and had lived through what may have been one of the most horrific occupations of the 1939-45 war.

  At thirteen, she had endured Stalin’s terror. At fourteen she had joined the partisans fighting against Hitler’s armies. She had ended her war in a concentration camp, but she had survived. And she had made it to England to give birth to her son, the child of her partisan lover who had died in the camps. Jake wanted to tell her story. He wanted to tell the story of the city that she had described with such passion and such regret–the sweep of history focused through the eyes of one woman.

  Her son, Antoni Yevanov, was a recent catch for the city’s university. It was the articles heralding his arrival that had first drawn Jake’s attention to Sophia Yevanova. Yevanov, an expert in international law, had been involved in setting up the war crimes hearings at The Hague. What the mother had experienced in one era, the son was trying to redress in another.

  Jake opened his work file and scanned the draft of the chapter he’d been working on the evening before, before Cass’s arrival had interrupted him: The allegiances of the Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia) in the Second World War are not as straightforward as those of the western European alliances. The Soviet occupation of these countries was harsh and repressive. The Nazi invasion of 1941 was seen initially as a liberation. This was a major factor behind Baltic collaboration in Nazi atrocities against civilians.

  His phone rang. He tucked the handset under his chin, and went on reading. ‘Jake Denbigh.’

  The notorious 12th battalion of the Lithuanian police carried out massacres of civilians…