The Englishman

by David Gilman

  ‘Your room is through here,’ Tomasz said, dropping his coat on the sofa and guiding Raglan through the spacious apartment. He plucked an envelope from the dining table as they passed. ‘My brother said you needed money, dollars and roubles. But not too much. Enough for a few days. If this isn’t enough let me know. I can go back to the bank,’ he said, handing the wedge to Raglan. ‘The train ticket to Moscow is in there; it leaves tomorrow afternoon and gets in at eleven in the morning the next day. My brother said nothing fancy, just a second-class cabin, no shower or toilet. You will have to share with two others. Is that correct? It’s an eighteen-hour journey.’

  Raglan smiled. ‘He doesn’t want me going soft.’

  ‘I cannot help you with anything official like a passport and you know the train goes through Belarus so you will need a transit visa...’ He caught himself in mid-sentence. His brother had told him enough about Raglan to suggest that he would not undertake such a journey unprepared. ‘Except for anyone travelling on a Russian passport, that is.’

  ‘It won’t be a problem,’ Raglan told him.

  Tomasz nodded. He shouldn’t have underestimated Raglan. ‘Very well. Freshen up. Don’t shower yet; wait until we have eaten. I’ll explain why later. I’ll get the food ready.’

  Raglan thanked him. The room being offered would not have been out of place in a five-star hotel.

  Tomasz smiled. ‘Milosz told me just a few details of what you and he did together. I’m honoured to help. Now, let’s eat. Then you can strip down.’

  40

  Raglan did as he was told. Once they had finished the meal he showered, dried off, pulled on his boxer shorts and returned to the main room.

  ‘In here,’ he heard Tomasz call.

  Raglan padded the length of the room and saw another door that led to what appeared to be a small beauty parlour booth with a treatment table covered in a towel, raised up to waist height. Rows of bottles of beauty and skin treatments stood on a small table beside it, and a strong lamp with magnifying lenses. It was the makeup expert’s equivalent of a mechanic’s garage. All the tools needed to ply his trade. Tomasz wore a white tunic buttoned to the neck and his long delicate fingers were now clad in latex surgical gloves. He studied Raglan when he came into the room.

  ‘Please stand there,’ he asked.

  Raglan stood, relaxed without being self-conscious, as his host walked slowly around him. His intake of breath was barely audible when he saw the scars from bullet, knife, shrapnel and torture. ‘It’s had some wear and tear over the years,’ said Raglan. ‘I could probably do with a retread.’

  Tomasz came to his front and stood close to his face, gently tilting Raglan’s head this way and that, studying his bone structure and the muscles that ran into his neck and shoulder. ‘I am on the medical register here in Warsaw. I have helped people with disfigurements and injuries far worse than any of the scars you bear. I can work with what you have.’ He smiled. ‘These are the tattoos your friend sent through that I am going to give you,’ he said, pointing to a computer screen discreetly concealed behind the door. It showed a selection of Russian mafia tattoos. ‘I have most of the transfers from the studio. Anything smaller than these large ones I can draw and fix on to your skin by hand using specialist materials. No needles,’ he added. ‘And I wanted to do them tonight so that I can see everything is as it should be in the morning before you leave.’

  The tattoos adorned ugly, broken-faced men. None had much in the way of head hair; most looked to have bad dental work; all looked as though they would happily cut out your liver and eat it raw. Raglan reckoned some of them had done just that.

  Tomasz pointed out the men’s various tattoos. Some were so crude in design it was obvious they had been inked in prison. ‘These are the most significant and tell the world who you are in the hierarchy. How many people you have killed, your distrust and hatred of authority.’ His finger went from one design to another, tattoo images that would go on Raglan’s back, chest, arms, neck and hands.

  ‘How do you know all this?’ Raglan asked.

  ‘The man, Sokol, who sent the pictures, he gave me a list. He was very knowledgeable about these Russian vory-v-zakone, but I have heard of these thieves-with-honour gangsters from a television series I worked on at the studio. Now. Face down, please,’ said Tomasz. ‘I need to prepare your skin. There must be no natural grease otherwise the transfers will not adhere properly.’

  Raglan climbed on to the treatment table and felt the sudden warmth of the lamp on his back. Tomasz’s fingers felt his back muscles. ‘All right, I will explain what I will do. You can ask anything. There is no pain involved.’

  Raglan felt a cool liquid being applied to his back. His muscles rippled as it stung the abrasions sustained during the fight with JD.

  ‘I apologize. This is ninety-nine per cent alcohol to strip out the natural oils.’

  ‘It’s nothing. I need to know what I have to do to keep those things on me without them peeling.’

  ‘They will not peel, do not worry. They will fade and once I get them on you then I will put a final seal on them and the alcohol in it will seep the pattern into your skin like an old tattoo.’

  ‘Making them look as though they’ve been there for some time is good. Some of them can be more faded than the others. It’ll give me street-cred status. You’re sure they’ll hold?’

  ‘I put a water-based adhesive on the back of the transfer which will not irritate your skin. I use it for medical prosthetics. These are the tattoo transfers they use in the film industry today. You see those actors on screen covered in jail tattoos? They are fake. As fake as the Royal Castle across the square which was destroyed in the war and rebuilt exactly as it used to be. Fake can be made to look real. In your case only for a while.’

  ‘How long?’

  ‘If you sweat a lot, or if you shower every day, no more than eight or nine days and then they begin to fade quickly. It will be noticeable.’

  ‘I need longer.’

  ‘If you shower less, then perhaps I can do something. Let me see how I get on.’

  Raglan kept his face down through the space in the treatment bed. His muscles flexed across his arms and shoulders, a blank canvas for the special effects artist. If Milosz’s brother was as good as he seemed then in a few hours he would emerge ready to be seen as a Russian gang member, his tattoos a passport telling those initiated into their secrets everything they needed to know about the man who bore them.

  Once he was satisfied that Raglan’s skin was ready for the transfer Tomasz lifted the sheet of plastic-backed paper bearing the image. He cut out the shape from the clear protective plastic and then laid the fake tattoo face down on Raglan’s back, carefully peeling off the paper backing. This would be the largest and most detailed of the tattoos and needed to be done with precision so that it lay perfectly flat on the contours of his back muscles. The complex image was a storytelling tableau. Across Raglan’s shoulders there was now a castellated crusader fort, below his shoulder blades the strident image of a crusader slaying a victim, and where Raglan’s back tapered to his waist there were now bloodied bodies.

  ‘Now I must swab this with water,’ he told Raglan. ‘Do not move, please.’

  Raglan felt a wet sponge pressed on his back, small rivulets running down his flanks to soak into the towel beneath him.

  ‘I use only bottled water for this because there is chlorine in tap water,’ Tomasz added with a note of professional pride. ‘I will towel you dry when I come to the rest of your body.’

  Raglan felt the delicate sensation of powder being dabbed across his back. ‘This takes away any tackiness,’ said Tomasz, pausing as he changed procedure, ‘and now another damp sponge with a final sealant.’

  The application of the transfer and its fixing was done with the utmost care and without haste under Tomasz’s delicate touch. ‘All right, now I use a hair dryer’s cool setting to dry everything off and make the glue adhere to your skin.’ The expert
waited until he was satisfied that the transfer was fixed. ‘Now you turn over and we do the next big one.’

  Tomasz adjusted the light and examined Raglan’s muscled chest. He smiled. ‘It will be like trying to lay a wet sheet across a mountainous terrain.’ Then he said, with a hint of regret, ‘Forgive me, but what I said about it being painless, that was not quite accurate.’ He paused. ‘Now we must remove the body hair.’

  *

  When Tomasz had finished his work of art and was happy that the tattoos looked as though they had been on Raglan’s body for some years, he pulled a secondary set of plastic curtains around the room and had Raglan stand, arms outstretched. Pulling on a medical face mask he instructed Raglan to close his eyes and then he airbrushed him with a water-based foundation to match his skin tone. Then it was powdered, dried and, finally, the work was finished.

  ‘Now, I think you must look at the man you have become.’ He pulled back the curtain and opened a storage cupboard door that had an illuminated full-length mirror attached to the inside.

  Raglan looked at the tattoos that adorned his body, arms, hands and legs. The most striking was the double-headed Russian eagle that spanned his chest with blood dripping from its heart. Military-style epaulettes on his shoulders gave him rank; a snake curled up one side of his neck. His hands bore small faded crude tattoos as if done with a needle and ink in prison. His thighs bore skulls on one and a snarling tiger head on the other. A blade with droplets of blood appeared to pierce the skin on one side of his neck.

  Tomasz stood back as Raglan examined his transformation. He pointed to the dripping dagger. ‘Apparently that means you are a killer for hire.’

  Raglan gave him a questioning look. The artist took a sheet of paper from the side table. ‘Your Russian friend sent through a list of explanations for what they all mean.’ Raglan took it but was more interested in the adornment that covered him.

  Tomasz stepped back into the apartment’s main room and peeled off the gloves. He looked at the lean-muscled torso of the tall man who stared unsmiling at himself in the mirror; his dark, scowling eyebrows accentuated the vision of brutality.

  ‘My brother taught me an English expression and now I understand what it means.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘You scare the shit out of me.’

  PART THREE

  RUSSIAN FEDERATION

  41

  Russian Federation

  October 2019

  The long journey across Poland, Belarus and into Russia was uneventful except for the amount of vodka consumed by Raglan’s two travelling companions, who slept stacked above his lower bunk bed in the three-tier cabin. Friendships were often formed on long train journeys and Raglan used the time to let the language seep back into him so that his own words came more readily when he spoke. He questioned the men about Moscow, giving the lie that he had been to visit his sister who had married a Pole but that he was from Belarus and was travelling to meet a well-known businessman who had offered him work. He was not familiar with the renowned underground system even though Sorokina had briefed him on what to do once he reached Moscow. He had familiarized himself with the various metro lines using Tomasz’s computer before leaving Warsaw but getting information from native Muscovites was valuable. They were happy to talk about their city, which they regarded as the greatest in the world even though they had never travelled further than Warsaw for their annual railwaymen’s convention. Moscow was streets better than St Petersburg. Everyone knew that. The tsars and their gilded buildings? No, they insisted, St Petersburg was only for tourists. Real people lived in Moscow. If they were lucky at this time of year it could mean bab’e leto, and who wouldn’t want an Indian summer when winter was just around the corner? The idea of late warmth brought a sense of cheer to the two men’s mood. Raglan imagined them huddled in the biting cold of their small apartments, hoping for that late autumn fresh air when maple trees turned yellow and red. Nostalgia played its part even with the seasons.

  His companions were older men and had plenty of stories to tell about the Soviet era. When they first entered the cabin Raglan had offered to give up his lower bunk to the older whiskered man, who quickly berated him for his offer of charity. Did he look infirm? he had demanded. But when he noticed the tattoos on Raglan’s hands and the snake’s head inching up behind his ear from beneath his collar, his attitude softened. Like most Russians, their goodwill and companionship were soon apparent and they readily shared their food and drink. The vodka soothed any trepidation they felt at sharing the confined space with a gangster.

  The younger of the two, a swarthy man with dark stubble and wild curly hair who looked as if he could have been a wrestler in his youth, dared to suggest their cabin was as small as a prison cell. He had once been arrested, said the stranger, attempting to find common ground with his fellow passenger. He’d been drunk one night and his wife began giving him a hard time. He had slapped her to keep her quiet. The police were called and he punched an officer. He spent two weeks in a city jail and reckoned this carriage was luxury by comparison. The man introduced himself as Igor Voronin, and his older friend was Josef Naumov. Both of them were retired workers from the Russian railways. Raglan offered to buy extra food and drink from the buffet car, but no vory-v-zakone ever pays. The two men had the citizen’s grudging respect towards gangsters, men who challenged authority, refusing to do anything that aided the state, living their lives according to their own law; their code gave these men a unique place in society.

  By the time the train pulled into Moscow’s Belorussky Station the two older men had spilt out their life stories. Russia was a modern country now, designed for those who could push their way to the front; it was not for the older generation. Tears had welled at the loss of the old Communist way of life and the travails they now endured under the new regime. But they had learnt nothing about the quiet man who had shared their journey. Between themselves, as they humped their cases on to the platform, they agreed that it was better not to know.

  Raglan watched as they made their way towards the end of the platform. A younger man dressed in jeans and a sheepskin jacket came out of a carriage and appeared to accidentally bump into them and then quickly offered an apology. But the apology took too long. Igor and Josef shook their heads. They were being questioned. Josef was about to turn and look back towards the carriage where Raglan waited but the apologizer gently took his arm and turned him around to stay facing him. Then, without another word, he walked away. Igor and Josef hesitated and Raglan guessed they had decided not to get involved. He watched as they shuffled away. Their interrogator put a phone to his ear and half turned to watch the passengers streaming down the platform as Raglan stepped down out of the carriage with his holdall.

  No doubt about it. Sheepskin Man was a cop. They had been tailing him since Warsaw. Elena’s men had been alerted.

  *

  It was a few minutes’ walk to the metro station. Raglan was not much interested in architectural design unless he was assessing ways to root an enemy out of a building, but he allowed himself a few moments of appreciation for the sheer beauty of the Moscow underground and the skill of the artisans who had built it. Admiring the art deco ceiling he deliberately missed his footing, dropped his holdall and used its recovery to glance back. Sheepskin Man was some distance behind and quickly lowered his head, blending in with the hundreds of other commuters who walked head down, gazing at their mobile phones.

  Raglan caught the line to Mayakovskaya Station and seven minutes later emerged into weather that was definitely not that of an Indian summer. A cold wind threatened to bring rain from the leaden sky. He knew where he had to go and continued down Tverskaya Street. He was a couple of miles from the Kremlin but he was heading for somewhere less impressive in a side street that lay off the broad, well-paved road. It reminded him of Paris and, to a lesser extent, Regent Street in London. Classical buildings nudged more modern designs. High-end boutiques and restaurants offered their wa
res to the rich Muscovites, a multitude of them, given the number of expensive cars that poured along the broad highway. He ignored the stream of yellow taxis that caterpillared down the boulevard and ten minutes later turned down a side street and then a narrow lane to a small ten-room hotel. He stepped inside and asked for a room. At best this was a family-run one-star hotel, the kind of place that needed all the business it could get. A neon sign in the window confirmed it: there was a 20 per cent discount on all rooms. The receptionist was probably the owner’s daughter as her level of front-of-house greeting was limited to asking whether he wanted to pay the 1,500 roubles in cash or on his card. Raglan paid cash and handed over his passport.

  The small room was glitzy, an attempt to make it look smarter than it was. A gold-painted pine bed with a red cover clashed with the black diamonds on the grey carpet. He didn’t care. He was going straight back on to the streets and wanted a shower before they came for him. Where he was going a shower would be a luxury. He decided against it. Better to stink than risk damaging the tattoos so soon.

  42

  Moscow Police HQ

  Building 6

  Petrovka 38

  Tverskoy District, Moscow

  They arrested Daniil Regnev on Mamonovskiy Pereulok Street barely two hours after he arrived in the city, just as Major Elena Sorokina of the Moscow CID had told him in London. It was carried out efficiently, especially the flurry of blows the cops rained down on him, knowing how much punishment to administer without causing serious damage. They snatched him as he sheltered in a doorway, pulling the collar of his jacket higher against the first cold bite of sleet. The police knew exactly where he was and held him in detention for twenty-four hours, where he once again felt the heavy hand of Russian police questioning techniques.