‘Get off me,’ she screamed.

‘Shut up, suka, bitch.’

‘Go to hell, you bastard.’ She kicked out hard and found his shinbone.

A hand struck her across her mouth, flat and hard. She tasted blood. A mouth stinking of beer closed on hers. She kicked out again but couldn’t breathe. His arm was pressed down on her windpipe, the weight of his body pinning her to the wall. She tried to scream. Felt her brain screech to a halt.

And suddenly it was over. With no sound her attacker released her as if he’d had enough of the fight and sat down on a pile of snow. He seemed exhausted. She dragged air into her starved throat.

‘Bastard!’ she gasped, and thumped his back where he sat.

Slowly, almost thoughtfully, he toppled over on to his face and lay sprawled across the snow beside the torch, his neck at an odd angle. Only then did she see the other figure, a face of hollows and shadows, a ghost risen from the churchyard opposite.

‘Chang An Lo,’ she breathed.

‘Come.’

He gripped her wrist and led her away from the broken figure on the ground, striding ahead along the dark road so that she had to hurry to keep up. She glanced behind her but the body hadn’t moved. The night seemed to gather into something thick and solid. When they reached a panelled door in the street, he withdrew a key and inserted it into the lock. The door opened with a whine from its hinge and then they were inside. The hallway was in total blackness but she could hear his breathing. She was sure he could hear hers, laboured and uneven.

He moved with no hesitation as though he could see in the darkness, and drew her with him up a flight of stairs to a door on the first landing. He opened it, guided her into the room and closed it behind them.

‘Wait here,’ he whispered.

He disappeared and a moment later a match flared. His face leapt out of the night. He was lighting a gas lamp that hung from the ceiling, adjusting the slender chains that regulated the flow. She heard it hiss into life and an amber glow nudged into the room. She released her breath. The place was small with a bed, an armchair and a bedside table. Surprisingly a crucifix hung on the wall. But this space was all they needed.

He came to her, stood in front of her, his eyes dark and alive. Yet she knew him too well. In the uneasy set of his jaw and in the soft line of his mouth she could see the reflection of her own uncertainty. She took a breath and moved forward till her arms were entwined around his neck and his hands were on her back, holding her, caressing her, finding the reality of her under all the layers.

‘My own love,’ she murmured and lifted her mouth to his.

As his lips found hers, hard and possessive, she felt the fragile barriers between them shift. Heard the crack as they broke into a thousand pieces and she knew there would be no politeness.

The blindfold was removed from Alexei’s eyes. He blinked fiercely as his vision adjusted to the sudden light and he examined his surroundings. It was an underground wine store. The stone walls were lined with racks of bottles in all shapes and sizes, the air so dusty it caught in his throat.

‘Who is this?’

‘Why have you brought him to us, Igor?’

The questions came from the group of about twenty young men gathered in the room, each with his shirt open to the waist. Tattoos covered their naked chests, distinctive blue messages to the outside world, and above them were lean faces and sharp suspicious eyes. None of them smiled a welcome. Shit, this looked like a bad mistake.

‘Good evening, comrades,’ he said amiably. He nodded a greeting and tried to steer his gaze away from the tattoos, which wasn’t easy. ‘My name is Alexei Serov.’

He placed the sack he was carrying on the floor in front of them, where dust and cobwebs coated the black tiles. One of the men with a whispery voice and his hair oiled either side of a neat parting, stepped forward and untwisted the neck of the sack. He lifted out its contents. Immediately the tension in the air eased.

It had been an easy steal. Yet it had disgusted Alexei. Revolted him. But it was what Maksim Voshchinsky demanded, a show of his fidelity, a demonstration of his courage. A gift for the vory. He’d said yes immediately and gave himself no time to change his mind. That same evening he went out on the streets of Moscow to prove he was worthy of their trust, that he was as much a thief as they were and had no fear of State authority. He’d spent two hours roaming the back roads, searching out an opportunity with the same precision he had used to reconnoitre military manoeuvres. When the chance came, he took it without hesitation.

He’d moved out of the darkness of a narrow lane into a rectangle of light thrown from an open door, slipping silently into a stranger’s hallway. That’s all it took to turn him into a thief, to make that jump that crossed the boundaries of decent conduct and plunged him into the wrong side of the world. His hands had reached out as though they had been performing such acts for years and removed the carved clock from the wall, as well as a small pewter vase from a table. In and out of the house in less than a minute. Less time than it took to slit your own throat.

The man who lived in the house saw nothing. He was outside in the dark street roping pieces of furniture to a cart, a horse dozing between the shafts, and he had no idea he’d just been robbed. Why someone would be shifting furniture at this hour of the night Alexei chose not to enquire, but it served his purpose well. The eagerness with which he wrapped his spoils under his coat appalled him.

He wasn’t seen. Except by the short, dogged figure of Igor, who hovered somewhere hidden by the darkness. He had seen. He knew.

‘It’s a good clock,’ the man with the oiled hair announced, holding it up for the gathering to inspect.

It was a beautiful timepiece, old and beloved, judging by the patina of polish on its case, and Alexei felt guilt, raw and spiteful, take a great bite out of him.

‘It’s for the vory v zakone, the brotherhood of the thieves-in-law, ’ Alexei stated. ‘I offer it to this kodla for your obshchak, your communal fund.’

They nodded, pleased.

‘Was there a witness?’ one asked.

‘I bear witness,’ Igor said. He stood up in front of everybody, his eyes challenging any dissenters. ‘He stole like a professional.’

‘Good.’

‘But has he been in prison?’

‘Or in one of the labour camps? Has he been in Kolyma?’

‘Or worked the Belomorsko-Baltiiskii Canal?’

‘Who else speaks for him?’

Alexei spoke for himself. ‘Brotherhood of vory v zakone, I am a vor, a thief, like you, and I am here because Maksim Voshchinsky ordered me to be brought to this place tonight. He is sick and in bed but it is his word that speaks for me.’

‘There must be two who speak.’

‘I, Igor, speak for him. My word stands side by side with that of Maksim, our pakhan.’

So this was it. Dear God, he had become a vor. He still had much to prove before they fully accepted him as one of their own, but with Maksim behind him, he’d pushed open the door. He’d learned from his talk with Maksim that cells of vory criminals exactly like this one ranged throughout the length and breadth of Russia, especially in the prisons, all with the same strict code of allegiance and system of punishments. Some called them the Russian mafia, but in reality they were very different from that Italian organisation: they were not supposed to have a boss, the status of each member was meant to be equal and family connections were rejected. The brotherhood was the only family that mattered. Decisions were made and disputes settled by the skhodka, the vory court that was as all-powerful as it was ruthless. But the pakhan was nevertheless in a senior position and his word counted. Maksim was the pakhan.