by Peter Tonkin
‘I’d never seen Boris so down as he was that night. It was the last concert they gave with him in the lead – though Fydor took over, as I say. We went back to the Petrovka. We had adjoining suites there. A couple of crates of Russian Standard were already waiting in Boris’s room and Fydor had been slipped some really high-grade coke and passed it to Boris so we all started to party. Things get a little hazy after that. The only one of us anywhere near sober was Fydor. He was pretty cut up about screwing up his solos, I guess. Boris was there to begin with. He was so depressed. He just wanted to get drunk and high. He did that a lot towards the end. I had to fight off Fydor but he went off himself after a while and left me alone. We all just crashed.’
Richard’s footsteps had slowed almost to a standstill. They were three-quarters of the way across the playground, heading down towards the Zubrs, past the main buildings. There was a light in the window of the room he and Robin were sharing but he was caught up in the story. ‘Any idea when Boris went and got the gun?’ he asked.
‘No.’ She answered matter-of-factly, her story practised. He got the impression that she was hardly even listening to herself any more. But he was. He was listening more and more closely. ‘I have no idea. But there were always guns: Simian Artillery by name and nature. Fydor was our gunsmith – we called him the AKman instead of the axeman. I was so drugged up I didn’t even hear the shots. I just remember waking up suddenly, certain that there was something terribly wrong. There was someone beating on the door and screaming like hell. Which was strange, because we never locked the door. Not after Boris nearly killed poor Fydor playing Russian Roulette. I mean, who’s going to break in on a well-armed, spaced-out heavy metal rock band, right? But I do remember people beating the door down at the Petrovka that night. Anyway, there was this smell … Gunsmoke. Blood. Whatever. A stink like you wouldn’t believe! I didn’t answer the door. I went into the bathroom because I was feeling pretty rough. And there he was. He was sitting on the toilet wearing only his jeans. No shirt. No shoes or socks. He had the AK under his chin. He was holding the barrel with both hands. To steady it, I guess. He’d put a towel there too. So he wouldn’t miss. Even at that range. He must have been wasted. And there he was, like, frozen there. The top of his head was gone. His brains were all over the ceiling and the wall. His face wasn’t on straight. But at least his eyes were closed.’
‘If he was holding the barrel under his chin,’ asked Richard knowing that he could not be the first to raise the point, ‘then how had he pulled the trigger? An AK is a long gun. It’d be a hard trick …’
‘With his toe,’ she answered simply, sadly. ‘Simian Artillery. Apes with guns. He had this trick onstage. His trademark. He used to play the guitar with his toes. Like a gorilla would. Pulling the trigger must have been a breeze.’
‘I see, said Richard. ‘But even so, there seems to have been a lot of damage. Brains on the ceiling, you said …’
‘Yeah. Tile. The whole place was white tile. And the blood was really bright red. Like jam. Raspberry varenye. And borscht. The ceiling tiles were all over the floor, too, mixed in with bits of his skull. You couldn’t tell what you were walking on but it all went crunch. I took one look, one step, sat down and started throwing up. I was still there when they broke the door down and came through, though they said that Fydor had pulled himself together by that time and he was holding me. And that was apt, as it turned out. I went with Fydor after that – for a while at least, till he got tired of me and turned me over to the others. The federal prosecutor later told me I was lucky Fydor did that: held me back – I hadn’t damaged the crime scene. Killing yourself is still a crime in Russia, though people find new ways to do it every day.’
Richard opened his mouth again. Shut it.
But she had heard it all, and knew the answers to the questions before they were even asked. ‘It was really lucky that the Petrovka is a loft hotel – he’d have killed anyone upstairs if there had been a room above. Then it would have been murder too, I guess. But he just fucked up the roof instead. Boris set the selector to automatic before he pulled the trigger with his toe. I don’t know how long he held it down for, but the bullets came out at six hundred rounds a minute, went four hundred metres or so straight up. Through his brain. Through his skull. Through the tiles. Through the roof. At seven hundred metres per second. Poor Boris. You don’t get any deader than that.’
They parted at the door into the orphanage’s accommodation wing. ‘You going to be OK?’ asked Richard, consumed with guilt. ‘It could be a long night.’
‘Yeah. They all are, Richard. I’ll get through it one way or another. I always do. And – don’t worry, it’s not the start of a slippery slope – I’ve the rest of my father’s bottle of Stoli to fall back on if the going gets too tough.’
Richard walked slowly down to the Zubrs as the howling of the tent lines faded and the hissing of the black river gathered, going over what she had told him in his mind, trying to work out why on earth there hadn’t been more of an investigation. Working it through and through.
Until the penny dropped.
Akunin
Anastasia’s father was nowhere to be found. Mako was helping Ivan organize the move of more Russians from one hovercraft to the other, but Richard found Ivan without too much trouble in the bustle. Ivan saw the danger of a waterborne missile attack against a couple of beached Zubrs packed with men and so he handed over to a lieutenant and joined Richard. But as they walked back across the compound, Richard was still fixated on everything he had learned about Boris Chirkoff’s death. So he had no hesitation in asking, ‘What do you know about the death of Boris Chirkoff?’
‘Who?’ asked Ivan innocently enough. Boris whatshisname echoed in Richard’s memory. That was what Ivan had called the unfortunate victim when talking to Max: Boris whatshisname.
‘Anastasia’s Boris,’ he answered.
‘It was suicide.’ Ivan’s tone was dismissive. ‘Epic and noteworthy, fair enough. Big enough to hit the headlines, even in Moscow. I mean, an AK under the chin. Brains all over the ceiling … That’s all I remember. Killed himself.’
‘You don’t really believe that, though, do you?’ probed Richard, going for confrontation. ‘You think Max had him killed – God knows he had reason enough, according to his own ideals and with his son dead and daughter seduced. Someone may have made it look like suicide, or enough like suicide to satisfy a perfunctory investigation. But there were too many little details wrong for that to ring true. You know that. You’ve always known that.’
Ivan stopped, turned and looked down at Richard. His gaze was level and calculating. The black water chuckled against the slope of the shore. The wind moaned distantly in the tent ropes. ‘Who says so?’ he asked.
‘I do,’ answered Richard. ‘Offhand I’d say it went something like this. A section of the crowd at that last concert in Red Square had been bribed to barrack the performance and throw bottles, though apparently Fydor Novotkin’s playing gave them a good excuse. Fydor was the lead guitarist. There’s more about Fydor later. Simian Artillery were booed offstage. Their reputation was ruined. Then someone put several cases of Russian Standard up in their suite. That’s, what, two hundred roubles a bottle? So right there, someone invested seven and a half thousand roubles in getting the band and their hangers-on drunk. And someone slipped Fydor a really sizeable baggie of good-grade cocaine which he duly passed on to the already miserable Boris Chirkoff. Street value? No idea. But again, not cheap. And the free drink and drugs just laid them all out. Money well spent. But my point is – it cost a lot of money. They were put to sleep on purpose. Price no object.
‘Next, Anastasia said they never locked the door to their suite so it would have been easy for someone to sneak in. The band and their girls would never have noticed. But the door was locked when the hotel staff arrived after Boris’s death. I’d guess whoever killed Boris did that. To give himself a little breathing space. One way or another.’
&nb
sp; ‘One way or another?’ queried Ivan. They were passing the orphanage accommodation buildings now. Ivan glanced at the lit windows and Richard wondered whether he had found out which one belonged to Anastasia’s bedroom.
Richard lowered his voice, but his tone remained urgent, his words clear. ‘Either someone crept in and did it, then locked up on the way out. Or someone who was already there did it and locked it from the inside to give himself a little more breathing space before anyone else arrived.’
‘Someone who was already there?’ Richard had Ivan’s attention back now. The Russian’s voice also dropped secretively. But his tone carried his words over the moaning ropes and the restlessness of the sleepy men. ‘Like who?’
‘As the police say – look for motive, opportunity and benefit. Max had motive and he benefited by way of revenge. He had no direct opportunity but he almost certainly hired someone who had.’
‘As the police say … Like they do in books, TV and films you mean …’ Ivan’s tone carried a sneer now. ‘Christ, it’s like talking to Boris Akunin!’
‘Who?’ Richard was genuinely lost for a moment, and not only by the abrupt change in Ivan’s tone.
‘He writes detective novels. Historical ones. On old, dead subjects.’ There was a definite edge to Ivan’s voice. Hostility. But it wasn’t an outright threat. Yet.
‘And apart from Max,’ persisted Richard, raising his voice again as they neared the tents – the flapping sides and doors adding to the general restlessness, ‘the other man who fits the bill of course is Fydor. Fydor Novotkin, the AKman. What was his motive? He had at least three – all well known. Boris nearly killed him during a game of Russian roulette. He wanted revenge. He wanted to lead the band. He wanted Anastasia. He wanted all three really badly. And to top it off, he probably got a good deal of money from Max into the bargain.
‘Did he have opportunity? He certainly did. Opportunity in spades – especially as he was apparently the only halfway sober one there that night. He was the guy who screwed up the performance – but didn’t get hit by any bottles. He was the guy with the cocaine but he handed it to Boris – and Anastasia doesn’t remember him snorting all that much. And he was the guy in charge of the guns. To top it all, that unexpectedly locked door just makes it look more like an inside job than a visiting hit man. Locking the door gave him just the few moments he needed to get everything straight. And Fydor benefited, didn’t he? He got the band, he got the girl. And later, when he decided to give both of them up, he suddenly came into a fortune and vanished.’
Ivan stopped in the middle of the compound. He turned and looked down at Richard. The wind suddenly dropped and everything went quiet apart from the relentless tramping of the sentries marching along their patrol patterns. ‘It’s lucky you weren’t the one in charge of the investigation by the sound of things, Richard! You’d really have stirred things up!’ Ivan’s tone was ironic. But was there a hint of threat there? Had Richard rushed in where angels might fear to tread? Further in and more foolishly than even he had calculated?
‘Yes, indeed,’ he persisted at once. In for a penny – in for a pound. ‘And now that you bring that up, we’ve arrived at the cherry on the cake, haven’t we, Ivan? Because who was in charge of the investigation? Why, the federal prosecutor, of course. He took a personal interest, I’m sure. He made sure all the ‘i’s were dotted and all the ‘t’s were crossed before he filed it away and forgot about it, just like Max would have wanted. The federal prosecutor. Lavrenty Mikhailovich Yagula. Max’s secret partner and Felix’s eminence grise. Your father!’
Ivan said nothing in answer to that; nothing at all. And Richard had nothing more to say either. Which was just as well, for they had reached the door of Kebila’s tent.
Kebila’s briefing of Ivan was short and to the point – then it was repeated as Mako arrived, and the pair of them went off to find Max, make certain he was safe, then to make sure that their men were on the alert, in case of a possible surprise attack from the river – and to mount extra guards on the Zubrs to supplement the extra sentries posted along the bankside. Richard left Kebila’s tent as silently as he had arrived there, with the Russian senior lieutenant and the massive colonel. But he parted company with them at the same point Anastasia had left him, preferring to go into the orphanage’s accommodation rather than continue listening to their technical conversation about fields of fire and reciprocal night actions.
He crept along a dark corridor past a door he was sure belonged to Anastasia’s room, then opened his own. He found Robin lying on the bed they were to share, clad in her lightest nightgown, with the sheets thrown over the bed foot to lie piled on the wooden floor. In the hot yellow flame of a smoking oil lantern, the little room was stultifying. There was no air conditioning and no fan. The window was shut and the curtains drawn. There were supposed to be no malarial mosquitoes in the area – but there weren’t any mosquito nets either and fair-skinned, notoriously bite-prone Robin wasn’t about to take the risk. She had a mosquito coil burning in the corner just to make sure, so as well as being stultifying, the room was suffocating. ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Lock the door now you’re here. I’m wearing far too much!’
‘My God!’ he whispered as she stripped off entirely. ‘For once in my life I’m afraid I’m just too hot to fool around!’
‘So am I,’ she snapped. ‘Besides,’ she added, lowering her voice, ‘the walls are extremely thin. And we’re surrounded by nuns!’
‘Oh, that does it!’ he agreed, also stripping off as swiftly as humanly possible, already awash with perspiration. ‘Consider me a monk!’
‘If not a eunuch,’ she whispered as his pants came down. ‘Thank heavens not a eunuch. But where have you been? And what have you been up to?’
Richard lay gingerly on the bed beside her. They both shuffled further apart – in the exact reverse of their normal night-time movements. The bed, however, groaned salaciously. Trying not to think what the nuns must be imagining, he leaned over and blew out the lamp. As the air filled with fragrance from the cooling wick, he whispered, ‘It’s too hot to sleep as well, isn’t it?’
‘Damn right!’ she answered. ‘So tell me all.’
‘OK. Right. Remember when Ivan brought Anastasia to our cabin?’
‘Looking like she’d just been shot in the head? Of course I remember!’
‘And she asked me to go to Max and get some vodka?’
‘Stoli Elit. Yes, I remember. She still has the bottle, the lucky girl …’
‘Yes, she does. If you get desperate you can bang on the wall and ask her for some. Well, at the door, I overheard Max and Ivan talking. And what I thought they said was …’
Half an hour later Richard had detailed the whole story, how he had worked it out and who he had told about it. Halfway through, Robin’s hand crept into his and clenched it tightly. And more tightly as the story proceeded.
‘So,’ said Robin when he had finished, ‘let me just get this clear in my mind. You told Ivan that you believed Max had this Boris person murdered because Boris’s drugs had killed his son and heir, and Boris had seduced Anastasia away from him. He did this by arranging the group’s big Moscow concert to be a failure. By supplying drinks and drugs in the expectation that the kids would all get so totally blasted they’d have no idea what was going on. By bribing this Fydor creature – who had a grudge against Boris as well as a strong desire to get hold of his band and his girlfriend – to kill him. That Fydor pulled all of this off, got the group, the girl and the money, in the end. And then the whole thing was swept under the carpet by Ivan’s father the federal prosecutor in return for becoming a silent partner in Bashnev/Sevmash.’
‘That’s about the size of it as far as I can figure,’ said Richard.
Robin lay silent for a moment. Then, ‘And you put this all to Ivan?’ she said incredulously. ‘I mean, you actually went through it with him step by step?’
‘Pretty much.’ Richard nodded, banging his head against the wa
ll that divided their room from Anastasia’s. ‘Seemed like a smart move at the time.’
‘He’ll take it straight to Max. And what then?’
‘Well. Then I was going to suggest to Max that if the secret was out in any case, but it was only hearsay and suspicion, and no one – least of all the federal prosecutor – was going to do anything about it …’
‘Yes, what then?’
‘Then shouldn’t he tell Anastasia what really happened? She’s been blaming herself all these years. Borderline suicidal. And none of it was her fault after all.’
‘You were going to suggest that, huh?’ she said, her voice suddenly throaty. As though she was on the verge of tears.
‘I was going to tell him either he should lay it all out for her, or I would.’
‘You’d do that? You’d run that risk for her?’
‘Well, wouldn’t you?’
‘Come here, you bloody man. Come here and kiss me!’ She took the hand she had been holding and placed it squarely on her stomach.
‘Now, I thought you said it was far too hot for that sort of thing,’ he whispered, beginning to roll lazily towards her.
‘It was. It is. But I don’t care.’ She arched up off the mattress towards him. The bed groaned suggestively beneath them.
‘The nuns,’ he teased. ‘What about the nuns?’ His hand slid down.
‘Sod the nuns,’ she said huskily, sliding her arms like snakes around his neck and lacing her fingers into the short hair at the back of his head. ‘They can get their own men. Now kiss me. Please …’
And that was exactly where their conversation had reached when the shooting and the screaming started.