Then he felt a stabbing sensation on the inside of his left wrist. In the poor light of the narrow landing he drew back the sleeve of his raincoat to see the bright red mark. It was shaped to resemble the seventh letter of the Russian alphabet. Why should he be branded? Why should someone called Joseph Richter need to have that mark on him?
2
‘Good heavens, what on earth was all that about?’
It was like a parade-ground shout. He was so startled he released his hold on his shoulder and swung round. He had remained standing at the top of the narrow stairs, holding his shoulder and trying to catch his breath, still waiting for some reaction from below, when an elderly man in an open-necked shirt, dirty apron and a hat made out of newspaper appeared in the doorway of the adjoining flat and shouted. Behind him was a teenage boy in jeans, also wearing an apron, his fair hair, face and spectacles spotted with dried drops of white emulsion paint.
‘I was attacked. Three men attacked me. They’ve taken my laptop.’
‘Attacked!’
‘Yes, attacked!’ The fact needed to be emphasized as if to dispel the slightly doubtful looks. ‘You didn’t see any of them, did you?’
Emphatic denials. ‘Who are you?’ The question was brusque.
‘My name’s Joe, Joe Richter. I’m renting this flat. Do people get attacked here regularly?’ He tried licking his lips to get the taste out of his mouth.
‘Good Lord, no! People do not get attacked here at all!’
‘Well, in that case this is a first time.’ Joe moved his jaw backwards and forwards, still stiff as it was from the grip of the fingers
‘Ah, well, I see, yes, yes.’ The elderly man gave a rapid nod. It almost shook off his paper hat. He blinked several times. The tone became friendlier. ‘Very nice to meet you. I am Ronald Salisbury. This is my nephew Billy. I’m your neighbour, you see.’
It took an instant to accept the introduction. An upmarket voice, resonant, authoritative, matched by lined, slightly aesthetic, pale, handsome, regular features, thin lips and moist blue eyes under grey brows, a broad forehead and grey hair. He held up a hand with white fingertips.
‘We heard the noise, that’s all. Can’t shake hands. We’ve been, as you can see…’ There was a smudge of white paint on Ronald Salisbury’s cheek, just below the right eye. It gave him a clownish appearance. ‘… just doing some home decorating in the second bedroom. But I can ring the police, if you like. I mean, if you’ve been attacked and had something stolen, surely, oughtn’t you?’
‘Thank you, I’ll ring.’ Joe respected the dutiful logic of the question. ‘It’s just that my phone’s on the floor. First of all, though, I’d like to clear things up.’
‘Of course, of course.’ Ronald Salisbury nodded again and began wiping his hands with a rag. ‘I used to rent your room, you know. Billy slept there until a couple of days ago. He’s one of the great army of unemployed now, I’m afraid. But people really don’t get attacked here. I’ve never heard of it before. Have you, Billy, dear boy?’
There was an awkward momentary silence. Billy seemed embarrassed. Or at least his very fresh, pink complexion behind the rash of small emulsion-paint spots grew slightly pinker.
Joe broke the ice: ‘Would someone downstairs have a key to my flat?’
‘They might. But I don’t think they’ll be much help. They’re all accountancy firms on the lower floors. There’s no caretaker here, you see. And that panel thing on your door will have to be fixed, won’t it? You’ll have to get your agent on to it. If he’s worth his salt, he should get a new panel fitted by tomorrow. He took references, I suppose?’
‘References!’ Why on earth hadn’t he thought of that before? References! That could explain why they’d known he was here. Of course references had been taken! The RGD would have given a reference, of course they would! He swore at himself under his breath. It was utterly foolish not to have thought of that earlier. ‘Yes, I can see now what probably happened. Yes, I’ll get on to the agent.’
‘If there’s anything more we can do, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. It’s been nice talking to you.’ Ronald Salisbury raised his chin in urgent demonstration of his willingness to help. ‘And do get in touch with the police!’
There was a mildly pugnacious ring to this statement that his listener resented. Joe was about to explain why he preferred not to involve the police when his attempts to give reasons were curtailed by the other pointing to a burglar alarm fitted unobtrusively near the doorframe of his open front door. Inside was a small hallway dominated by dark-blue wallpaper.
‘I’ve got my own private security system. Our landlords don’t like it, but security comes top of my agenda. There’s a chap in the CID I know quite well, he could probably help you if you want to, you know…’
‘No, no, thank you, but I’d rather…’
‘As you wish…’
‘Yes, I’d rather…’
‘Well, it’s up to you.’
Ronald Salisbury gave him an elderly, clear-eyed, contemptuous look. So he was clearly being disbelieved about being attacked. Equally clear from his neighbour’s clipped, almost military tone of voice was his familiarity with giving orders and imparting advice. Both had been delivered simultaneously, obviously to his satisfaction. That was that, then. Joe said goodbye.
The two of them, man and boy, stood silhouetted against the dark-blue wallpaper of the hallway. The elderly clownish face had turned and was gazing affectionately at Billy’s round spectacles spotted with a snowstorm of paint.
‘Oh, dear boy, you’re a bloody awful mess, you really are!’
******
He knew he couldn’t tell Jenny everything since he was not sure himself exactly what he was dealing with. The stuff he had found after using the password and decoding had been very strange indeed. All he had done was download the material, translate it and show it to Leo Kamen that lunchtime at Scythian Gold. If he suspected he knew where it came from, he was certainly not prepared to divulge the suspected source, nor did he know for sure how the material had reached him.
Yet he knew he was angry. The whole episode smelled of betrayal. True, there was no such thing as a free lunch. But if a bunch of heavies sucker-punch, blindfold and gag you, all in the name of the international working class, and leave you branded with a bloody silly little mark on the inside of your left wrist, you must feel at least suspicious, not to say betrayed, not to say resentful, not to say bloody angry.
And yet maybe that wasn’t right. Of course it wasn’t Leo Kamen. No, of course it wasn’t Leo! It was customary for Leo to use the restaurant at Scythian Gold whenever he was in London on his usual three-day visits from California. And if it wasn’t Leo, then it must be someone who wanted the material quite as badly and was a great deal less impressed by the likelihood that UK law enforcement agencies would stop him. Who could that be if not someone from the world of Scythian Gold?
It was the watering-hole and acknowledged meeting place of the local London oligarchy where the oligarchs felt safe enough to congregate when they wished to meet ordinary citizenry, or at least such ordinary citizenry as were deemed worthy of Scythian Gold’s patronage and exorbitant prices. The rules were not the same there. If you understood the language, particularly the argot, you were accorded enough respect to be admitted to any level of privileged entertainment, even at a discount, because you were assumed, or known, to have contacts in the right places. You wore that privilege like a miasma entitling you to receive the utmost obsequiousness from waiters, nice tables, good money prospects, private accommodation, always a deferentially welcoming smile.
That determined him. He would not go to the police. He would keep it all to himself. Even keep it from Jenny Malden even though he’d texted her.
In the restaurant she squeezed his fingers. It was only as much insistent pressure as that. She had always been completely frank when officialdom didn’t intervene. Now they had to cement things back between them as soon as possible.
He knew he was hopelessly malleable. By her, at least.
‘Please tell me. We’ve talked about all my things, now just tell me what happened.’
Their supper at Silvester’s, the Italian restaurant on the other side of Courtier Street, was almost over. Most of it had been devoted to her two weeks in New York as PA to a senior civil servant who was a climate expert. Now Joe lifted his glass of Italian red wine, drank and ran the tip of his tongue a little self-consciously round his lips. At the table behind them a man was saying something in German – ausgezeichnet something, sehr gemuetlich something. Their waiter, an Italian youth about eighteen, with ringlets of black hair and red cheeks, dashed by them carrying a tray. She slowly raised her own glass of wine and then put it down. Her hair was straight, dark-brown or dark-auburn, and it fell forward slightly like a veil either side of her face. The sheen of her hair, the slim shoulders and arms and, most of all, the delicate shape of her slim fingers as she steadied the glass in front of her and pursed her lips made him ache with passion for her. He had grown slightly frightened of that ache.
‘You told me you’d received material. What was it, this stuff you said you’d received?’ She looked him straight in the eyes. He knew he had been evasive earlier. She let go of his hand. ‘You said it was a letter of some kind?’
‘Yes, it was in Russian. I imagine it dated from any time before the Russian revolution because it was in the old orthography, in the old-style, pre-revolutionary alphabet. And it was all about birds, a letter all about birds!’
‘Birds? What birds?’
‘The import and export of owls, ravens, starlings, canaries – those sorts of birds. And then what seemed to be book titles and references of some sort. It didn’t make much sense.’
‘And you translated it and showed it to your mother’s friend?’
‘Yes, I showed it to Leo Kamen. This afternoon at lunch. He said he wanted to see it. Well, he’s buying it, that’s what it’s all about. He got me other small contracts for translations.’
‘Leo being?’
‘I told you – Leo’s the reason my mother’s in California.’
She looked down at her fingernails. ‘I’m sorry. Remind me.’
‘He’s her live-in partner, her lover.’
‘I see.’ A very fine half-smile, formed as if she was about to lick her lips but had stopped, conveyed all the puzzlement and curiosity of her reaction. ‘What’s he do, this live-in partner your mother has?’
‘I haven’t known much about him. He comes over here to London fairly regularly on business, but he lives in Zuma Beach, near Los Angeles. He’s associated with publishing and television. My mother, you see, did translations for him, which is how…’
‘How they met.’ She finished the sentence for him. ‘Yes, yes, I get the picture.’ She tapped fingernails against the side of her wineglass. ‘So he brings money with him when he comes?’
‘Not always, but this time, yes. You see, when my father was alive I couldn’t see him when he was over here. I met him out there in LA when I flew over to see my mother – Lois is what she likes to be called – when she was having treatment, you know. It’s only since my father died that I’ve been meeting Leo when he comes over here.’
‘Do you get on?’
‘Well, I…’ He drew back the sleeve of his jacket and his shirt cuff and was about to unclip the catch on the metal strap of his wristwatch when he suddenly felt the brand was too shameful and obscene to show her. Instead he scratched his wrist briefly and quickly drank some wine. ‘Yes, I think we do.’
‘You don’t sound too sure.’
‘It’s difficult. My father called him all sorts of names and wouldn’t have anything to do with him. So nobody talked about Leo. And then there was my grandmother… I get very boring when I talk about her!’
‘Go on, talk about her!’
‘The truth is…’
There was a pause. He looked for guidance in a row of Italian liqueur bottles on a shelf at the back of the long counter. The gaudy labels were no help. They didn’t help him to come to terms with his father’s death at the beginning of the year, which had preoccupied him even more than employment at RGD. Parental divorce and then lengthy consultations with solicitors and accountants over the will and disposition of property were compounded by the annual arrival of his grandmother.
‘The truth is she’s never liked the name Richter. She’s always insisted on keeping her own name. She once claimed for some reason my father wasn’t her son. Anyhow, she bugs me, know what I mean? But Leo, he’s at least made my mother happy. And he’s stood by her during the treatment. And I like him. But I don’t know if I can trust him.’
‘Why?’ She watched him finger his jaw. A series of delicately apologetic gestures accompanied what followed. ‘Joe, please don’t go all secretive on this. Don’t shut me out. Just tell me why you don’t think you can trust him.’
He knew he was being silly in trying to hide his own doubts over what had happened. ‘All right, I was mugged!’ The admission came out angrily. ‘I get back from the lunch, I think someone’s broken into my flat and then it happens, three of them burst in, punch me, stick something in my mouth and start an interrogation. Why? Because of that bloody letter! Then they take my laptop.’ He did not mention the branding.
‘But that’s awful! So you think Leo…’
‘I just don’t know.’
She looked at him again, that straight Jenny look of very wide blue eyes. ‘You’re not telling me everything, are you?’
‘I’m just angry!’
‘Of course you are! Have you told anyone – the police?’
‘No.’
‘Why not? You must tell the police!’
Unexpectedly he found himself objecting, holding up both hands a little defensively and lowering his voice. ‘I don’t want the hassle. I’m pretty sure it’s got to do with where we had lunch, that Scythian Gold place. I took you there, remember?’
‘Oh, that Russian restaurant! It was when you…’
‘When I hit The Kiss, yes.’
He grinned awkwardly at her. It was the result of a spirited exchange with someone known politely as Mr Potseluev or Comrade Potseluev, a burly thirty-year-old nicknamed ‘The Kiss’ because he made a habit of speaking loudly with one fist raised and threatening to use it to ‘kiss’ anyone who annoyed him. Probably unwisely, Joe Richter had traded insults with The Kiss on the last occasion he had entertained Jenny, been knocked down and had repaid the compliment by breaking a couple of The Kiss’s ribs. It had led eventually to his dismissal as a co-ordinator in the PR department of RGD, but not before The Kiss had been sent back to Russia.
‘What I remember was the blood all over my dress! It was ruined!’ She gave a little shriek of laughter and held her hands wide.
‘Yes, sorry.’
‘Oh, don’t be sorry! I thought how clever you were to talk to him like that. I mean, I didn’t understand a word you said, but when you hit him back, oh, I thought, we’re in for a fight now, but he just sort-of collapsed. I was very impressed, you know, very, very impressed!’
Again he grinned, holding his wineglass towards her. ‘Thank you. But I thought maybe you didn’t approve.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, you went off to New York the next day, didn’t you? And I didn’t know how much I’d miss you.’
‘You didn’t know…’
‘I didn’t know how much I’d miss you.’
‘I know, I know.’ Contrition vied with reproach in her tone. ‘My turn to say sorry. I am really sorry.’ She shook her head. ‘There was this UN climate change debate. I had to go!’
He smiled enough to allay any hurt, recognising there was no need to expect more explanation. The point had been reached when a couple of weeks of self-doubt and introspection during her absence were beginning to melt. He began to feel nicely immune from excuses, let alone self-pity, at that moment. Candour seemed easy. Simultaneously the strobe-like headlights of
passing vehicles in Courtier Street high-stepped through the bottle-green glass of the restaurant’s front window and showed him vague reflections of his face as well as blurred flashes of light from windows opposite that mirrored the advert ‘HEat your home. HE is best.’
What he was not going to tell her, no matter how malleable he might be, was why he was not going to tell the police, why he had to be self-reliant. It was not a question of national interest. It was based on a friendship largely cemented by a mutual love of Russia and things Russian, but so personal and fragile it would be smashed to pieces if the juggernaut of a police enquiry were set in motion. He knew that had to be avoided at all costs, since he could not get out of his mind that odd little phrase he had heard spoken in one of the private rooms at Scythian Gold some months earlier:
‘You’re really V I, aren’t you?’
‘Vee Eye? What’s that mean?’
What the hell did it mean? It was said with a laugh and he was too taken aback to ask what the hell it meant. The talk had moved on quickly enough into that shamelessly maudlin, emotional Sargasso Sea of vodka-induced candour that so often passes for Russian soulfulness.
‘Well, I lost my job.’ He ran the tip of his tongue round his lips. ‘That’s what happened to me, as I’ve told you. Right after that evening.’ He leant right back and looked up at a chandelier. Lowering his head, he said: ‘I’m not madly worried at not being involved in the LNG, the liquid natural gas part of it, or whatever it is that comes out of the Yamal Peninsula or anywhere else, let alone what’s called the Nabucco pipeline. It’s not RGD any more. What matters is not losing touch. All I want now is that we keep in touch and you don’t suddenly take flight to somewhere or other without warning, so I don’t know what the hell’s happened, know what I mean?’
‘Joe, I can’t promise it won’t happen again. As I told you, I may have to go back to New York or somewhere else any time now. Conferences spring up all over. About anything. It sounds silly, I know, but I suddenly get told I must go. Anyhow…’ She drank and quickly changed the subject. ‘That whole lobbying bit you did for RGD, it paid off very well.’ She held his gaze with a shrewdly fond look. ‘They are aware, you know. In the Department, I mean.’
Mr Frankenstein Page 2