‘We should discuss business, Inspector.’ There is a note of warning in Shevchenko’s voice, as if he seeks to divert Skelgill’s attention.
Skelgill shrugs and pops another slice of varenyky into his mouth. He turns to DS Jones with a pronounced nod of the head. She seems to understand and reaches for her shoulder bag. From a small folder she produces Leonid Pavlenko’s passport and the photograph of the blonde girl that had originally fluttered from it. As she positions these on the table for Shevchenko, Skelgill seems to be drawing a comparison between the image and the two females beyond him. Shevchenko is bent over the picture, but does not touch it. His reaction suggests he thinks along similar lines.
‘I could show you a thousand girls like this in Kiev tonight.’
He sits upright and drains his glass. Then he stretches for the bottle to dispense top-ups. Skelgill looks pensive.
‘What are you saying?’
‘Is only one reason why a woman has this type of photo shoot.’
Skelgill’s gaze again falls upon the girls in the next cubicle. Almost imperceptibly, Shevchenko seems to be nodding in confirmation.
‘Maybe two – second to attract western husband.’ Now he smiles boyishly, showing even white teeth. ‘I expect you already have English wife, Inspector?’
Skelgill simpers; he glances at DS Jones, who is concentrating hard upon a page of notes. But before he can fashion a reply there is a distraction, for the two blonde girls rise in unison and sweep elegantly towards the exit, turning a succession of heads. The man is still engaged with his telephone conversation, but as he too stands he swivels to look at the trio of detectives, catching them in the act of observation. From behind the sunglasses the precise direction of his gaze is indeterminate, though to Skelgill’s eye it appears he exchanges the merest of nods with Shevchenko. The females are already being fed into the rear compartment of the charcoal limousine by the driver, and in another thirty seconds the man has joined them and the vehicle pulls away.
‘Know him?’
Skelgill’s inquiry is casually spoken over a sip of horilka.
‘Let’s say I know who he is.’
It appears Shevchenko will be no more forthcoming. Skelgill turns his attention back to matters lying before them.
‘About the photograph.’
Shevchenko nods.
‘You think this girl go to England – she hide from the authorities and now Pavlenko, he join her?’
Skelgill seems unwilling to confirm this version of events. He picks up the horilka and replenishes their glasses – though only he and Shevchenko have finished their latest measures. The bottle emptied, he raises it and examines it critically.
‘How easy is it to get into Britain?’
‘Not so difficult. We have a five hundred kilometre border with Poland that leaks like a sieve.’
He clicks his fingers, as though it is as simple as that. But DS Jones has a caveat.
‘Captain – we’re not in the Schengen Area – they’d still have to get past British Immigration.’
Shevchenko is starting on another cigarette. He glances up from the act of lighting it with an amused glint in his eye. Of course, he has not offered a Christian name, and DS Jones is perhaps unsure of how she ranks alongside him.
‘It is Juri.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘My name – it is Juri.’
He raises his drink to her – then he looks back to Skelgill, who drains his glass with a grimace. Shevchenko shrugs languorously.
‘Inspector – these questions – they will be better answered by Pavlenko’s associate – tomorrow.’ He seems to vacillate over the word tomorrow. ‘Tonight you are guests in my country and you must relax – and eat.’
‘Eat?’ Skelgill gestures loosely to the remnants of the varenyky.
‘This is appetiser – and aperitif.’ He flicks the rim of his glass with a nail. ‘This bar easy find for rendezvous – but I take you to place where is more interesting – more... cultural.’
Shevchenko does not elaborate upon the definition of cultural – nor does Skelgill request such an explanation. Instead he sinks back into the sofa and for a second his eyes seem to roll in his head. Perhaps the half-pint of horilka is kicking in. It falls to DS Jones to raise one of the points they had wished to discuss.
‘We believe we found the necklace that Pavlenko is wearing in the photograph you sent us – it’s an amber charm – it could be to ward off evil.’
Shevchenko grins mischievously.
‘We are big on amber – our Baltic neighbours pick it up on their beaches by the bucket – and we are big on superstition – in fact we are big on everything – peasants, poverty, billionaires, beautiful girls – horilka.’ He grins and swallows the last of his own drink. ‘This is the Wild East – if you want a crazy time, you have come to the right place.’
With a smirk he slides DS Jones’s glass towards her, and watches as – under subtle duress – she finishes the drink. Then he rises and beckons them to follow with a quick flick of his head that sends a ripple through his hair. Skelgill stands up, but too quickly perhaps, for he remains still for a second, as though his balance has momentarily deserted him. DS Jones, though a good glass-and-a-half behind her companions, is nonetheless more circumspect. Carefully she gathers her things into her bag, and then raises it symbolically.
‘Juri – can we pay the bill?’
He dismisses her offer with a casual wave of the hand – though he smiles with some satisfaction at her use of his name.
‘Is taken care of – come, I have driver nearby – my colleague, Lieutenant Stransky.’
16. FIXER
‘Is heaven, yes?’
‘Uh?’
When Skelgill wakes it is in a darkened room and he lies naked upon a stone slab. A muscular young man wearing only a leather thong is lathering his body.
‘You turn.’
‘What?’
‘Turn.’
‘No way, pal.’
‘I – sorry?’
‘Wait till I see Shevchenko – I’ll swing for him.’ Skelgill adds a further phrase, an unbecoming descriptor drawn from his Anglo-Saxon lexicon of stressful situations.
‘No understand – no speak English.’ This is just as well.
Skelgill brings his arms from his sides and rests his chin upon his overlapped hands. His field of vision is limited to the marbled wall a yard away. It streams with drips condensed from the steamy atmosphere. Relaxing music is piped from somewhere, and the irregular splash of running water may be real or otherwise. Every so often there is the slap of one of the masseur’s sandals as he adjusts his position. Skelgill’s expression hovers between rage and dismay.
That he gives the impression of having been somehow spirited into this peculiar predicament without his knowledge would not be entirely accurate, although he might have a case for feeling somewhat manipulated, press-ganged even, and that an accidental excess of horilka had significantly impaired his free will. As it was, upon leaving the chic bar off Khreschatyk, he had probably consumed more alcohol units in half an hour than he would in an entire Saturday night’s drinking session, and – as Shevchenko had intimated – that was just the aperitif.
Lieutenant Stransky had been idling in a shadowy mews at the wheel of a newish ZAZ that had already seen its share of action – if its scraped doors and dented fenders were anything to go by. Skelgill had paused to finger what appeared to be a bullet hole in the hood when Shevchenko invited him to ride up front – an unexpected courtesy that became all the more confusing when he clambered in. A tight black leather catsuit and long slick raven hair proved a quantum leap in the surprise stakes. Lieutenant Stransky had acknowledged the bewildered English inspector with a superior smirk of her glossy scarlet lips, and his startled colleague with a cursory nod via the rear-view mirror. She had then wasted no time in pinning them to their seats with a display of driving that went much of the way to explaining the state of the coachwork.
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Their harum-scarum journey lasted no more than five minutes, and took them to a poorly lit, Bohemian district of unevenly cobbled streets and shabby grandeur, elaborate but crumbling Art Nouveau, a loosely defined ghetto to which the former Soviet authorities must have turned a blind eye, allowing the true spirit of Ukrainian hedonism to survive, tolerated just below the totalitarian radar. As if symbolically, a pair of burly doormen, stern Khrushchev lookalikes, had nodded them through a low arch to descend a steep flight of stone steps into a dark basement of vaulted chambers that throbbed to the underground beat of the day; a humid dungeon complex thronged with the bodies of hundreds of revellers, shouting, drinking, swaying, in places dancing. Shevchenko had led them to a section most distant from the music source, where bench-style trestle tables lit by candles wedged into empty vodka bottles were crammed with informal diners, arguing and toasting and generally in party mood. Somehow he had negotiated a co-operative concertinaing of patrons, and Skelgill had found himself compressed between Lieutenant Stransky and a large Hell’s Angel type who had greeted him with unintelligible grunts and a thump between the shoulder blades whilst simultaneously eating and drinking and grinning. DS Jones had slipped in directly opposite, tight alongside Shevchenko.
No sooner had they settled than a waitress in what might have been traditional dress – most notably a tight sleeveless velvet bodice fastened over a white cotton blouse embroidered with detailed coloured stitching – had heaved a litre of horilka into their midst and Shevchenko had quickly done the honours. Lieutenant Stransky – who could not have failed to appreciate she was a few drinks behind her companions, and with scant regard for her status as designated driver – had raised her glass to Skelgill and downed its contents in one, obliging him, in the name of chivalry, to reciprocate. Shevchenko and DS Jones – he had noted – were closely engrossed, though such was the ambient cacophony that it forced a certain intimacy.
DS Jones appeared amused by Shevchenko’s patter – her dark eyes were glittering in the flickering candlelight. But Lieutenant Stransky had her own ideas about where Skelgill’s focus ought to lie. Her English was at least as good as her colleague’s, and her guile more subtle – for she was of an age with Skelgill (he would have guessed mid-thirties, though he had the good grace to avoid the subject). She had mischievously asked him why the British called her country “the Ukraine” – to which his on-the-hoof logic, in defence of his misguided compatriots, had resorted for erroneous corroboration to “the USA” and “the UK” – although he had been forced to admit that “the Germany” and “the France” were not common parlance. She had encouraged him to regale her with his adventures at work and beyond, though he had skirted around matters of the heart, craftily evasive beneath the cover of inebriation. When he had turned the tables and asked if she were married, she had thrown back her head with abandon and cried, “Of course!” – then proceeded to press a hot palm upon his thigh and hiss something into his ear in Ukrainian that amused her greatly.
Some drinks later – with no sign of food appearing – she had straddled the bench to face him. She tilted back her torso and supported her weight with her hands behind, so that her close-fitting outfit strained against her figure, feminine curves united by a slender waist beneath his captive gaze. Then she had grabbed his arm and stood, and – stepping out of the seat – pulled him to his feet. “We dance,” had been her command. Skelgill had anxiously looked to DS Jones – but she was preoccupied, Shevchenko’s fingertips on her wrist as he made some point – and when she did glance up it was with a contented smile that did not falter as Skelgill was led away, and she returned her attention to her earnest petitioner.
The club was nearing capacity, and dance floor at a premium – it was just a matter of shouldering through the swell until a small pocket opened up – when (to Skelgill’s relief) there was insufficient space to do much other than shimmy upon the spot. Lieutenant Stransky had taken him close to a bank of speakers – conversation was out of the question – but perhaps this was her strategy, for a more base form of communication seemed to be her goal. Cocooned in heat and dark and noise and anonymity, alcohol-loosened inhibitions were easily shed, and Skelgill offered scant resistance to the advances of firm hips, soft lips – and found himself becoming acquainted with the lithe brunette, who left him in little doubt about how she would like the night to end.
When eventually thirst had driven them back to their table, they discovered Shevchenko and DS Jones to be absent. Not even DS Jones’s leather jacket – nor Shevchenko’s sports shell – were folded on the bench. Skelgill had experienced some dismay, but pressed with horilka and the continued close attention of his catsuited companion, his cares had waned and he was subverted to her will, the passage of time becoming indeterminate. Incredibly, it had seemed, at around four a.m. dishes of steaming stew had arrived – can he dredge from his memory the word guliash? – and he had fallen upon his like a half-starved dog. By now Skelgill was operating on autopilot, holding a tenuous thread that connected his physical self to the joystick of his consciousness. There had been a ringtone, audible above the more subdued beat – Lieutenant Stransky had prised a mobile from some hidden nook – the conversation had seemed strained, a reluctant acceptance in her tone as she abruptly ended the call.
And his next recollection, if it is to be trusted, was in the back of a car (her car?) – with DS Jones beside him, limp and compliant, her hair damp with exertion – a rumbling roller coaster ride through streets empty but for the blur of taxi tail-lights and kiosk neon. And then the hotel lobby – and a cajoling conversation – Shevchenko’s voice, persuasive, perverse in its insistence – something about Russia? – here it is most famous in all of Kiev – no need to sleep – it is so much better – an essential experience – look, it is open, after five a.m. – there, it is organised – go now – sleep later – adieu!
And thus in some state of vague awareness – he could not vouch for DS Jones – they had been conducted to the subterranean sauna complex for which the hotel was renowned – its Russian banya – a sequence of treatments alternating temperature, pleasure and pain that would prove – in Skelgill’s case, and aided by his unplanned ‘power-nap’ – a remarkable antidote to the intoxicating effects of horilka (if not the associated hangover).
Alert, trapped prostrate in a small darkened chamber with a scantily clad young man, if Skelgill revisits in his disturbed mind the sequence of events that has brought him here he may recall it began with a reception by a stout female, uniformed and impassive, who spoke no English but had supplied them with towels and peculiar felt hats, and abandoned them with some obscure gesticulation in a waiting area beside a plunge pool and a bank of communal lockers. DS Jones had remarked that she thought they had been told to get completely undressed, a suggestion that Skelgill had consigned to an unprintable fate lacking sunshine. Shortly, two watchful males had silently materialised – evidently employees, surly cavemen in standard issue pelt miniskirts – they had conferred slyly in a corner before the elder had directed them with grunts into a fantastically hot sauna, and indicated that they should don the hats, and – yes – remove their undergarments (which they had retained as proxy swimwear). He had then disappeared, leaving them to sweat, in due course complying on the hat front, but not as regards their modesty.
After a short time the younger man had returned (minus the miniskirt, now stripped down for action to the thong beneath) and signalled to Skelgill that he should follow him. Unenthusiastically parting from his colleague, Skelgill had stumbled to a steam room, where he had been soundly thrashed with switches of birch soaked in a mentholated concoction, before being led out to a marble bench on which he was ordered to lie so as to be doused with ice – at this juncture screaming out with shock something about the secret police. Next he was sternly commanded to take off his boxer shorts, before being hauled into a freezing cold shower – and then led into the contrasting steamy warmth of the chamber in which he currently reposes. The t
reatment here is a prolonged full-body lathering with rich soapy bubbles at the hands of the masseur – a situation from which Skelgill would ordinarily have bolted like a colt with a firecracker tied to its tail. However, at the time not knowing what to expect, and subdued by the lingering effects of the horilka and the softening-up KGB-style, he had complied and lain face down on the slab. In his efforts to distract his thoughts from what was occurring – but perhaps lulled by this very process – he had swiftly succumbed to slumber.
He draws the line, however, at turning over. And his masseur’s request has come as more than just a literal wake-up call. As Skelgill stares helplessly at the damp marbling that tricks his eyes in and out of focus, he must now be pondering the fate of DS Jones, one stage behind him in the sequence, presumably at the mercy of the rapacious senior masseur – who, on reflection, had determined the staff-client pairings. Meanwhile, evidently marking the conclusion of this soapy step – its unhappy premature ending brought about by Skelgill’s obstinacy – his own attendant begins to rinse him with warm water from a hand-held shower hose. The man clears his throat, preparatory to delivering a rehearsed line in stilted English.
‘Next for full-body honey-wrap cling-film.’
*
As DS Jones approaches the waiting Skelgill, crossing the foyer from the elevators to the casual seating area beside the windows, there is a fascinating exchange of glances, one that an onlooker would not find easy to characterise. On either side there could be flashes of reproach, jealousy, embarrassment and guilt.
Murder by Magic (Detective Inspector Skelgill Investigates Book 5) Page 16