Dead Tomorrow

the dog its daily meal. He had no idea what breed it was. Like most of the thousands of stray dogs that roamed the outer districts of Bucharest, it was a mongrel. Twenty-nine years before Romeo had been born, one of Ceausescu’s early acts as president was to throw the Romanian bourgeoisie out of their homes. Most were forced to leave behind their dogs, which ran wild and had been living and breeding on the streets ever since.
    But the dogs were smart, figuring out that if they were mean, people would kick them and throw stones at them, but if they were friendly, they got fed. Over the years the stray dogs and the street people of the city had bonded. The dogs guarded the street people and, in turn, the street people fed the dogs.
    ‘I’d say he’s got some schnauzer in him,’ the woman said.
    She looked at the boy’s cute, grubby face, and his round blue eyes, and his jet-black hair, messily cut, and his withered left hand. She observed his clothes, his worn-out jeans, his ragged, hooded top and his threadbare trainers, studying him carefully, as if inspecting him. Although she already knew for sure the kind of person he was and the world he inhabited. And, crucially, how to get through to him.
    The boy thought the woman had a kind face. She was pretty, with a tangle of fair hair that was being blown about by the wind, casually dressed, but in the kind of expensive clothes that did not belong here in this district. An elegant, shiny, tight-fitting leather jacket, with the collar turned up, over a dark roll-neck jumper of fine wool, studded jeans tucked into black suede boots, big jewellery and beautiful black leather gloves. The kind of woman he would see emerging from a limousine outside one of the big hotels, laden with shopping bags, or being disgorged, in her finery, at a smart restaurant. People like her inhabited a different world from his own.
    ‘His name’s Artur,’ he said.
    ‘That’s a nice name.’ She smiled and said it out aloud. ‘ Artur. Artur. Yes, a very nice name. It suits him!’
    The boy pulled some out-of-date kidneys from a plastic bag and put them in Artur’s mouth. The dog ate them greedily, in one gulp. Then he dug his hand into the bag again. There was a butcher around the corner who was always kind to him, giving him strips of meat, pieces of offal and bones every day.
    ‘What’s your name?’ she asked.
    ‘Romeo.’
    The boy was sizing her up. A wealthy visitor. Rich pickings! He pulled out a rank pig’s trotter and the dog clamped its jaws on to it.
    The woman smiled. ‘Do you live around here?’ she asked, although she already knew full well that he did, and where.
    He nodded, eyeing her. Eyeing her handbag. It was ruched leather, with chains and buckles, and a huge brassclasp on it. In his mind, he was sizing it up, thinking of all the things it might contain. A purse with cash, a mobile phone. Maybe some other stuff too, like an iPod, that he could sell. He glanced around, but so far as he could see she was unaccompanied. There were no smart cars parked nearby that she could have come from.
    He could grab the bag and run!
    But at the moment, she had the strap over her shoulder and her left arm was looped through the chain, gripping the top of the bag with her gloved hand, as if streetwise herself. He would need to distract her.
    ‘Where are you from?’ he asked.
    ‘I’m from Germany,’ she said. ‘München. Munich. Have you been to Germany?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘Would you like to go there?’
    He shrugged.
    ‘What country would you like to go to, if you could?’
    He shrugged again. ‘Maybe England.’
    Her eyes widened. ‘Why England?’
    The dog had almost finished the huge trotter and was looking at him expectantly.
    ‘They have jobs there. You can be rich in England. You can get a nice apartment.’
    ‘Really?’ She feigned surprise.
    ‘I heard that.’ Romeo checked inside the plastic bag, to ensure he had missed nothing, then dropped it. The wind sent it skittering away. Immediately, another dog, a misshapen brown and white creature, ran after it, pounced and began pawing at it.
    The woman still had a tight grip on her leather bag.
    ‘Would you like an air ticket to England? I might be ableto arrange it for you, if you would really like to go. I could get you a job.’
    Their eyes met. Hers were beautiful, the colour of blue steel. She was smiling, looking sincere. He looked back at the handbag. Almost as if she knew what he was thinking, she kept