The snow crunched under our shoes. I think one of my shoes was leaking, or some snow had got in over the top: my left foot felt wet. Useless enough sensory data, if you like. I began turning my head very gradually, so that I could trap the sounds from behind me in the auricle of the right ear; his footsteps loudened slightly. I estimated he was still a good six feet behind me, so that there was no chance of turning on him. But I kept my head slightly to one side, exposing the right ear to the auditory source for the left hemisphere to process. I could hear his breathing now; he was a heavy man, too well fed by his loving wife.

So in fact the rose thing wasn't really going to work out after all — it was just a grandiose gesture, a juvenile urge to make an impression from out here in the never-ending dark. It would have been subtler to send one rose, one sublime and perfect rose to remember me by, not an ostentatious barrowload. Ignatov, old boy, do you mind if I just phone Harrods before we wind up the evening?

Something like laughter, a long way down in the psyche, a neural reaction perhaps, while the slow cold wave went down the spine and the sweat gathered and ran, the reaction of the beast that smells the slaughterhouse: he was squeezing his finger at every step we took and I could feel the impact and hear the shrill jangling of the nerve system as the organism took the shock.

I believe I've got another thirty seconds to live. But there's nobody I can tell. We're born alone and we die alone and no one really notices.

Headlights swung across the facade of the building opposite and sparked light from the windows. Sound of a vehicle, smell of exhaust gas.

'The Syrena,' the man behind me said.

'Oh yes. Sorry.'

I hadn't meant to go off course; it was the organism again, not wanting to go near that particular car because it was a hearse. The headlights swung in a half circle and I saw the vehicle turning in from the street, a small dark Moskvich bumping over the ruts with its snow chains clanking and the bodywork rattling — a kind of mad toy that some joker had wound up and sent into the car park to raise a laugh. It obliterated the slight sounds Ignatov was making and of course I couldn't see him because he was behind me, and for a moment the idea came to me that he wasn't there any more, that I'd let my nerves get out of hand to the point where I'd imagined him. It was an enormous relief and I took a deep breath and remembered the reports of people who had come back from the edge of death; they all said the same thing: first you panic, then you try to do something about the situation, then when you realize it's all up you get the feeling of euphoria as the organism anaesthetizes the final awareness of death.

But I wasn't at that stage yet and I'd better wake up to the fact that Ignatov was in fact still behind me and all he had to do was stumble a bit on the frozen ruts and his finger would tighten and I'd be finished.

'Ignatov,' I said. 'You didn't understand what we were saying, did you, Viktor and I?'

'No.'

The little Moskvich rattled to a halt a dozen yards away and its lights went out.

'He offered me a deal,' I said over my shoulder. 'He said he'd let me leave Moscow if I gave him my word not to tell anyone where he is.'

'Don't turn round,' he said, and I could hear that he meant it. I suppose the Moskvich was worrying him: it might be a friend of Schrenk's or someone he knew, and they might come over for a chat.

'I refused the deal,' I said. 'But I think that was unwise. I'd like to reconsider.' I wanted time.

'The Syrena,' he said. There was a note of warning in his voice.

'If Viktor knew I was ready to accept the deal, he'd prefer it that way. We've worked together, you know. He must have told you.' More than anything I wanted time.

'He told me nothing.'

A man got out of the Moskvich and crunched across the snow. He didn't look in our direction. In the quiet of the night the distant tram went on droning. My senses had become finely tuned in the last few minutes and I was acutely aware of the environment.

'Viktor and I are good friends,' I said over my shoulder, 'that's why we all had a drink before we started talking. It's just that he thinks I want to stop this little protest he's going to make — you know, about Borodinski. You can quite understand how I feel about it now. I'd like to reconsider the deal he offered me. I want to talk to him again.'

My voice sounded odd in the silence of the car park, the voice of a man talking to himself. 'Viktor would come down very hard on you if he ever found out I was finally ready to do the deal with him.' Time. Give me time.

But it meant nothing, except that a drowning man was grasping at straws, worse, fabricating them out of thin air. Ignatov didn't bother to answer. The Syrena was twenty feet away from me now and I was walking straight towards it. With my head still turned I couldn't tell if he'd come any closer to me; I didn't think so; I think he was still walking in my footprints, hoping to keep the deep snow out of his shoes.

Fifteen feet.

Ten.

The car stood broadside on. The passenger's door was closed, just as I'd left it when I'd cut the scarf from his wrists and ankles and let him get out. The keys would still be in the ignition: I hadn't been concerned about them at the time because I'd seen that the man hobbling across the car park was Schrenk.

'Open the door,' Ignatov said from behind me. His voice faded a little as he spoke: he'd stopped, to keep a safe distance between us when I opened the door.

Thought was becoming rarefied, and reality slipped out of focus: I nearly asked him who was going to drive. The Syrena looked bigger than it had before, a large brown container for the body, snow covering its roof like a white pall and a dead man's face in the window: my own reflection.

Take him out to your car and when he is inside it, shoot him dead.

The night was totally still. I could feel the cold creeping into my left foot, and smell the faint residue of the exhaust gas the Moskvich had left on the air. A long way off I could see the glint of a gold dome: one of the churches, with an illuminated red star at the tip of a spire. Beyond it the sky was black. In the immediate environment I saw my pale reflection in the window of the Syrena and Ignatov's crooked shadow across the bodywork. There was no one else in the car park, so he would have taken the gun from his pocket by now, in order to shoot accurately.

'Open the door,' he told me again. His voice was still heavy and authoritative, and there was something else there now, distinct but difficult to define. I think it was a kind of awe: my heightened awareness told me that he had never killed a man before.

I opened the door, and the snow fell away.

'Get in.'

I did as he told me. He was still six feet away from the side of the car and he wouldn't come any closer, in case I tried to attack him at the last minute. I was right: the gun was now in his hand, and I saw him lift it to eye level and hold it forward so that he could line up the sights.

'Wind the window down,' he said. 'Hurry.'

He wanted to get it done with before anyone else drove into the car park. I turned the cheap aluminium handle and the window went down in a series of jerks, sticking on the rubber flanges and then freeing.

'Shut the door.'

The keys were still in the ignition and I tugged them out as I dragged the door shut and flung them hard into his face and kicked away from the door to give me the impetus for a horizontal dive that took me clear of the steering wheel with my right fist punching the horn to provide sound shock and my left hand wrenching at the driver's door handle and the main force of the momentum sending me through the gap as the door burst open and the retaining strap broke and the panel smashed back against the bodywork. The first shot ruffled the sleeve of my coat and shattered the window: he'd shouted something, maybe a cry of alarm because of the horn, and the soft wet phutt of the silencer came an instant afterwards. I was into the snow and lurching on to my feet and losing balance and trying to find it again.