by David Gilman
*
‘I told him I wasn’t a Communist,’ said Raglan as he joined Yefimov at the head of the queue where the men were being given a mug of what appeared to be steaming coffee. ‘And that I wasn’t a homosexual. He seemed keen to be sure about those things. Has he killed anyone here?’
He and Yefimov walked away from the others. ‘If he had, he would be in the hell house. Locked up twenty-three hours a day, not allowed to sit on his bed during daylight hours. Christ above, that is a living death. No, he hasn’t raised a hand, that’s why we let him rabbit on. Rage like that is better leaked like a broken pipe and allowed to dribble out little by little.’
‘Then Kirill isn’t the one who wants to cut my throat?’
Yefimov grinned. ‘I thought you might wonder. I reckoned it might keep you on your toes with him. Listen, I’ve been told to keep an eye on you. Nothing is supposed to harm you in here. I don’t want to know why, only that Anatoly Vasiliev ordered me to his office last week and told me you were being sent here. That I wasn’t to ask any other questions. What he wanted was for me to watch your back.’
‘I can look after myself,’ said Raglan.
‘You can. I see that. But here… you know, it is easy for a throat to be cut and made to look as though the man just fell in the snow and got caught on some old barbed wire. A pencil in the eye? Choking on a piss-soaked sock? Suicide. You see how easy it is. We would get a shakedown; they would send someone to the hole for a few weeks. It happens. Anatoly Vasiliev told me you would not be here long. I don’t know what that means, but if it was said about me, I would think I was going to be a target. That they would kill me in here.’
Raglan weighed up the information. The plan was for him to kill JD and then make a run for it. If the authorities intended to kill him soon, then that would defeat the aim of the operation. So that ruled out Elena’s involvement. But he knew there was a short-term commitment from the man running the camp in the governor’s absence. If he was concerned about his own participation then he would most likely be the man behind the threat. Raglan kills JD and then the evidence is removed. The deputy governor’s hands were clean. ‘You think that’s what will happen?’
Yefimov shrugged.
‘Who might find out?’
‘Kirill is a man who is useful. Maybe he is not a man, perhaps he is a ghost and his God has placed him among us for a reason. I don’t subscribe to such nonsense but it does no harm to consider all possibilities. He watches and listens and you don’t even see him there. I put you with him because once a week he goes down to those houses and works as a cleaner. Then he brings back a man’s clothes for the laundry, a man who is not a prisoner, and then takes them back the next time he goes to clean. This man is not a guard; he is not a part of the prison staff. Who is he? Like I told you, Daniil Regnev, we dislike strangers in our midst.’
Raglan felt the relief of finally knowing where JD was being kept.
‘And is he the man who wants me dead?’ It seemed an obvious question. Perhaps JD had learnt of his appearance at the prison.
Yefimov studied Raglan for a few moments. He was wary of asking too many questions. Too much information could prove fatal. ‘Did you see Kirill in the shower block this morning?’
Raglan scanned the images in his mind’s eye of those in the shower block. The men had come and gone but he hadn’t noticed the man he now knew as Kirill. ‘I saw someone bent over a mop as he sluiced away the water on the floor.’
‘I told you: Kirill gets cleaning duties. There’s a prisoner from the hut next to ours. He’s a torpedo. You understand?’
Raglan nodded. A torpedo was an organized crime hitman.
‘So, Kirill sees you washing, he sees your gangland tatts, and then he notices this Spartak Matveyev watching you. Kirill is an observant man and now that you’ve let him talk about his favourite subject without interrupting you’re already ahead of the game with him so he will also look out for you.’
‘I noticed a guy watching me this morning. Is that the man? This Spartak Matveyev?’
‘That’s right.’ Yefimov pressed a finger against Raglan’s bicep. He wasn’t surprised at the resistance his finger met; Raglan was well muscled but that muscle wouldn’t stop a sharpened dowel honed to a fine point in the workshop, which is where the hitman worked. ‘Here is where you have a tattoo of a wolf. The man who watched you this morning has a bear tattooed in the same place. You are from rival gangs. And several years ago a very important man belonging to the other gang, Gennady Dorosh, was kidnapped and tortured, his body dismembered while he was still alive. Your people mutilated him.’ Yefimov sighed and tossed the cold dregs from his mug. ‘You have brought a turf war into our midst. Now, tell me, how am I supposed to watch your back as the deputy governor has instructed me if there is a hitman out to kill you?’
‘I don’t intend staying long enough to cause you that problem.’
‘Tonight, tomorrow, next week. Maybe he will wait for when the snow comes. It won’t be long, Regnev, and hiding a body in the snow is child’s play. You would be listed as an escapee.’ He nodded towards the vast forest. ‘And that’s as good as dead. So, you won’t be missed beyond that. Some paperwork and a reprimand for the guards. Shit, it’s nothing.’
Raglan needed time. If he could find a way to get to the house where he now suspected JD was hiding then he would kill him and run, but he had to plan at least two days in advance. At least. Good weather and a clear run at it.
‘Talk to Matveyev. Promise him whatever he wants. When I am out of here, I’ll make sure you get the best parcel you’ve ever had.’
Yefimov grinned, shaking his head. ‘You’re a foreigner, I know that. You stumble over words. Many would think you are an uneducated hard man from the inner city, someone with no schooling. Maybe even Belarus. Someone who joined the Moscow gangs and made a name for himself. I don’t know how much of that is bullshit and I don’t care. It’s a good enough smokescreen but you’re not going to live long. Talk to a torpedo? He has nothing to lose. He won’t care if he’s put in the hellhole. His reputation will climb higher than that hawk up there,’ he said, looking up at the dark shape circling high in the sky. ‘To him, you’re an honour killing.’
47
Raglan spent the next two days working in the clearing with Yefimov’s crew but kept a wary eye out for any sign of Matveyev. If the man had any intention of trying to intimidate Raglan, then he was keeping a very low profile. Raglan had seen hard men take the intimidation route before: a constant in-the-face challenge until the man provoked struck out. That was a mistake. It gave the tormentor the upper hand. He has been waiting for it. His mind is detached. His emotions are under control. But Raglan didn’t think Matveyev would try that tactic. The men in the penal colony were not yet subdued like circus beasts; they might have had years of incarceration behind them but that did not mean they would let one man get away with creating havoc among them. If Matveyev made a grandstand attempt to kill Raglan in front of the men, then that would draw in others, which could cause a riot. There had been no word on the prison grapevine that the torpedo was planning an assault, so it was possible he would come at Raglan when least expected. Somewhere out of sight. Away from the eyes of the guards.
Raglan saw Matveyev on roll call but the gangster avoided eye contact. On the second night in the canteen he saw him across the room at a table with some men who were younger than most of the prisoners in the colony. These were likely to be convicts who had served less than half their sentences so they still carried that look of street-toughness. Raglan’s eyes met Matveyev’s briefly but the torpedo continued eating and talking to the small cohort of inmates around him. As Raglan made his way to a table with Yefimov his peripheral vision showed the hitman watching him. He was biding his time. There would be a moment, probably by chance, when the two would collide. And then it would be settled.
Yefimov took pride of place at the table, his back against the wall, leaving Raglan the remaining chai
r, meaning that his back was to the killer. He would have preferred to be facing Matveyev, who could saunter through the dining tables and plunge the sharpened handle of a spoon into his ear, a favoured means for a quick kill when a blade was not available. On the other hand, Raglan realized as he stooped to spoon the broth, turning his back on the man was a sign of disrespect that signalled he didn’t give a damn about Matveyev’s status.
Raglan tore off a piece of bread and softened it in the hot liquid, glancing up at Yefimov. The old man seemed to be concentrating on his food but Raglan saw that his casualness was a practised nonchalance. The old sweat had command of the room. He had placed men from his dormitory on the tables in front of his own. If the hitman made a move, then his cronies would try to run a blocking game as he attacked, and if that happened then Raglan’s hut companions, as old as some of them might be, would get in their way. No blame would be attached to them should Raglan then defend himself.
Raglan had other concerns too. The days were slipping away without achieving a target appraisal. He needed a plan of action; he needed to find a way to reach JD and make his own escape before Matveyev’s impending attack. If Matveyev was going to make his move it was more likely to be when Raglan had fewer men around him than here in the canteen. All Raglan had to do was have a plan in place and stay alive. But neither was a given.
*
The following morning after roll call Yefimov led the men out of the compound into the clearing. Everyone knew the weather would change in the next few days. Men grumbled among themselves that their outdoor work would soon be curtailed. Raglan learnt that those on work detail were prepared to work twice as hard on any day that the weather cleared. The timber would be dragged to the yard, ready for cutting, then chopped and stacked for the boilers and woodstoves. The fresh snow made their work more demanding but the effort was worth it to get out of the barrack confines.
The men paired up as usual and set about their day’s work. Kirill and Raglan edged further into the undergrowth and began cutting through the saplings and dragging clear last year’s fallen branches. The horses were already pulling clear the previous day’s efforts of felled timber. After two hours of listening to Kirill’s right-wing views about Communism, the decline in women’s sexual behaviour and the conspiracy of the West to undermine the Russian Federation, they had moved ever deeper into the gloom of the forest, which put them momentarily out of the guard’s sight. As Kirill began extolling the virtues of returning the old Soviet satellite states into the bosom of Mother Russia, Raglan stepped quickly to him and tugged him a few further paces away behind the larch trees.
‘Tell me another story, Kirill. Tell me about the man in the house you clean.’
The fanatic’s eyes narrowed behind his wire-rimmed spectacles. ‘You want I should tell you about him? Why?’
‘I think it will be a good story and I’d like to hear it.’
‘I have privileges now, you know that. I get to work in the house two days a week. I kept my nose clean and I mind my own business. What I do and what I see is for me to know.’
‘And for me to find out,’ said Raglan, keeping careful watch over the smaller man’s shoulder to where the guard would soon walk into view.
Kirill shook his head. ‘I gave you and Yefimov information about Matveyev. That’s enough.’
‘And if Matveyev thinks you’re spying on him—’
‘I do no such thing!’
‘I know that, but he saw you in the showers that morning, and he knows Yefimov protects you, and if he comes for me, he might come for you. He would have nothing to lose, would he?’
‘But you would kill him if he tries, yes?’
‘I’ll try, but he might get the better of me.’
‘Then the information about the man in the house would be of no use to you and I might be dead anyway. I see no sense in discussing the matter further.’
Kirill turned away but Raglan blocked him. ‘I have something to tell you about that man. If it is who I think it is, he has information that I need and he is the kind of man that you would hate if you knew the truth.’
‘Truth? He is a man staying in a house. What more is there to know about him? I don’t care.’ But Kirill looked uncertain; Raglan had planted a seed of doubt in the extremist’s mind.
‘Describe him to me.’
Kirill didn’t answer.
‘All right, let me describe him to you.’ Raglan quickly gave Kirill an accurate description of JD. ‘Is that him?’
Kirill nodded and looked even more sullen.
Raglan went on: ‘I don’t want to tell you too much about him because you will react badly, and when you see him again, you might find it difficult not to challenge him. And then you’ll lose more than the privileges you have worked so hard for. He’s a dangerous man, more dangerous than some of the prisoners here. So tell me where the house is and what it’s like inside. I know and understand all the things you have told me over these past few days. But the man in the house is against everything you believe in.’
‘How could you know that?’
‘He killed a woman I knew.’
Kirill considered the information. ‘Plenty of men here have killed women. It’s not uncommon. Even I have killed a woman and her daughter. I am paying for my sins and God will forgive me because He sees I am repentant.’
‘But from what I have learnt you delivered justice,’ said Raglan, trying to find a connection that would make Kirill think he was sympathetic.
Kirill nodded. ‘I did. It was necessary.’
‘And what I need to do with this man is necessary.’ Quickly, Raglan told Kirill a simple lie to bring him on board. ‘He’s a émigré Communist who lived in Paris . . .’ Raglan painted a picture of someone who’d made himself rich at the expense of ordinary Russians. Kirill spat in disgust. The worse kind of Russian. A Communist who made money on the backs of the others.
The guard appeared at the head of the clearing and checked that the prisoners were working. Raglan quickly bent and grabbed an armful of cut undergrowth as Kirill swept his axe into the next copse of saplings. When the guard turned his attention away Kirell tugged free the crucifix on a chain around his neck and kissed it.
‘Tell me what you need to know.’
48
The house was approximately a kilometre from the camp’s main entrance and sat in a plot of land of about 1,500 square metres, with clear visibility all around. The two-storey house had a small kitchen and eating area, three bedrooms, a sitting room, an indoor toilet and bath and a small extension a metre square and two metres high with shelving used for food storage: an ideal outside refrigerator. Old, probably fifty years, and until last year the family home of one of the guards who had since been rotated elsewhere. Raglan asked about the structure of the house. Walls and floors were wooden and the building sat on a concrete base so there was no basement. Yes, said Kirill when asked, the floorboards creaked when you walked on them, but they had rugs scattered on them for additional warmth, which had some kind of felt tucked under each corner so they wouldn’t slip. He knew this because when he was sent to clean the house he was obliged to pull back the rugs and apply and buff the polish with a manual buffer. Did Raglan know how much hard work that was? A block of heavy metal on the end of a pole with soft rags underneath. Raglan did. He had done much the same when he was a recruit in the army. He doubted JD’s house would pass muster with the Legion.
The stairs ascended from the living room. On the first floor there was a bathroom and three small bedrooms. Which bedroom did the man sleep in, Raglan wanted to know. Front or back? It was the front. Outside, the wood store was on the south side of the house under an open-fronted shelter. From what Kirill told him Raglan estimated that it was eighty paces from the gate to the front door, half that from the back fence and half that again from the side walls. Kirill always went through a small gate at the back, past the pantry and in the back door, which was always locked. A small bell attached to a chain was u
sed to rouse the occupant. Electricity was not always reliable, especially when the backup generators weren’t functioning as they should, so it was not unusual on some days to find propane gas lanterns, the kind that campers used.
How did Kirill get to the house? Did he walk or was he driven by guards? He would walk on a good day, ride in a snowstorm. The guard dropped him off and came back for him at the end of the day. Kirill went in at eight and came out nine hours later. He scrubbed floors, washed and ironed the laundry, cleaned windows, hand swept and polished all the floors and laid out the food at mealtimes on the small table in the kitchen. What about the man living there? He never spoke. Watched television. Smoked, drank vodka to excess but never seemed drunk; he also drank a clear liquid that turned yellow when diluted with water and which smelt of aniseed. It’s Pernod, Raglan told him. A French drink. And here it would be a luxury. So the man in the house is being well treated for his crimes. Raglan saw Kirill bristle. Every negative comment Raglan made about JD helped keep Kirill onside.