Delicate Indecencies

by Sandy Mccutcheon

  His hand trembled as he clattered his cup down on the bedside table. He looked at Teschmaker with a sudden blaze of hatred.

  ‘Do you think I wouldn’t tell you if I knew? Of course I would, but I don’t know. I never did. Marcia Zanda, Yakunin, Guy Greenglass, Georg Bella, Hugh Cowgill . . . too many dead gardeners. All I did was train them. I gave them my little flowers. I didn’t know they would kill them.’

  Just as suddenly as the anger had swept over him it vanished and the old man sank, drained and shaking, back into the pillows. ‘You know what you would see if you could look into those mirrors?’

  Teschmaker wasn’t certain that he was the one being addressed but he answered nevertheless. ‘No. What would I see?’

  ‘Mrtví vstanou z hrobu.’

  The dead rising from their graves? The old man was demented, Teschmaker realised, and paranoid, his mind haunted by ghosts of his own making. Yet that didn’t explain why he was here, locked away in this house. And how long had he been here? And speaking Czech — is that where he had vanished to all those years ago?

  Teschmaker got wearily to his feet and, draining his tea, put the cup back on the tray. One last shot, he thought. ‘Good night, Mr Morris,’ he said quietly and then added in Russian, ‘Spokoinoi nochi.’

  ‘Desvidanja,’ the old man replied automatically. So he also spoke Russian.

  ‘Maybe we’ll talk again.’ But if the old man heard him he made no reply. Teschmaker left the room and shut the door quietly behind him.

  Viola scrambled to his feet as he saw Teschmaker come out of the old man’s room. ‘Would you like more tea, Master Martin?’

  ‘No. I have to return to the city. Tell me what the medicine is for.’

  ‘I’m not sure. I think it’s supposed to help his memory but . . .’ He paused and glanced around as if he was about to break a confidence and wanted to make certain nobody was going to reprimand him. ‘But I think it makes him a bit silly and sends him to sleep.’

  ‘He sleeps a lot?’ ‘Sometimes he pretends . . .’

  Well, the craziness obviously wasn’t faked. Teschmaker moved to leave. Then he stopped. ‘Oh, one other thing, Viola . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thanks for the tea, it was very nice.’

  Teschmaker walked down the stairs with the distinct impression that behind him on the landing Viola was blushing with pleasure.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Back at home Teschmaker was about to call Oliver Sinclair when the phone rang. It was Aleksandr Shlyapnikov.

  ‘You remember the black Ford?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s a cheap long-term rental.’

  ‘And . . .’ Teschmaker knew how Aleksandr Yefremovich liked to string things out. It was already late and he was impatient to get on to Sinclair.

  ‘Laverov . . .’ Shlyapnikov paused as though the name should mean something to Teschmaker. ‘Konstantin Ivanovich Laverov.’

  ‘He doesn’t sound very Romanian,’ Teschmaker snorted.

  ‘That’s the whole point.’ Shlyapnikov laughed. ‘He’s a Russian muzhik — a real man, an old-fashioned homo Sovieticus. Laverov was raised on the three staples: Communism, pelmeni and vodka. He was the KGB chief for the Moscow Military District, but things changed faster than he could and Konstantin Ivanovich found himself seriously out of step with the times. In Moscow the dominant species isn’t homo Sovieticus any more, or even homo sapiens, but homo Mafioso —’

  ‘But what is he doing here?’ Teschmaker interjected. ‘And why is he hanging out with the Romanians?’

  ‘Patience, Martin.’

  Teschmaker heard something that sounded suspiciously like Shlyapnikov throwing back a shot of vodka.

  ‘When they changed the KGB to the FSB he decided to retire, but apparently Sergei Stepashin, who was in charge at the time, persuaded him to stay on in some kind of advisory role. I don’t know if that is still the case but the story I hear is that he is working from the Romanian Embassy so that not even his Russian colleagues know what he’s doing.’

  ‘And how did you find this out?’

  There was a muffled laugh at the other end of the phone. ‘My friends have friends and their friends told them.’ He laughed again. ‘Then I rang up the Russian Embassy and asked the receptionist —’

  ‘The receptionist?’

  ‘Sure. Why not? You know what it’s like these days — khozyaina nyet.’

  ‘Nobody is in charge?’

  ‘Exactly. And she told me everything I needed to know,’ Shlyapnikov said triumphantly. ‘Mind you, she is a regular at the restaurant — she rates my pelmeni as better than any she’s had in Moscow.’

  ‘I’d have to concur.’ Teschmaker shuddered at the thought of the number of times in Russia he had been confronted with inedible pelmeni. ‘But, Bozhe moy! My God! Where’s the security gone?’

  ‘To feed the stomach the mouth has to open.’

  ‘Is that an old Russian saying?’

  ‘No, my friend, I just made it up.’ Shlyapnikov laughed at his own joke. ‘But that’s it, I’m afraid. Nothing more. My reading is that the man is on government business.’

  ‘Thanks, Aleksi, you’ve been a great help.’

  ‘It’s nothing. Come and eat again soon, Martin.’

  ‘I will. Spokoinoi nochi — good night.’

  So this man, Konstantin Ivanovich Laverov, was a not-so-innocent abroad, operating out of a friendly embassy in order to keep his own people in the dark about his intentions. Well, that had only been partially successful. Even if the Russians didn’t know what he was up to, they knew he was in town. But doing what? It was a fair bet that Jane’s father was the key. He spoke Czech like a native and when Teschmaker had switched to Russian, Mr Morris had replied without hesitation. But why would the Russians have an interest in an old man who was obviously not in full control of his faculties? And why did Jane keep him locked away in the countryside? Too many questions — too few answers.

  He glanced at his watch: almost eleven. He picked up the phone again and dialled the number Oliver Sinclair had given him. To his surprise it was picked up immediately.

  ‘Oliver, it’s Martin Teschmaker.’

  ‘Good, I was just about to phone you.’

  ‘You were?’

  ‘Jane is back in town. I was looking after Mel and —’

  ‘Mel?’

  ‘Melanie Louise, our daughter.’

  ‘Okay. And?’

  ‘Jane came around. I thought she was going to pick Mel up. I mean, that’s what she normally does.’

  ‘But not this time?’

  ‘No.’ Sinclair paused as though gathering his thoughts. ‘She asked if I would mind keeping Mel here for another night. Apparently she has something on tomorrow evening. I thought you should know.’

  ‘Sure,’ Teschmaker replied. ‘You want me to keep tabs on her?’

  ‘You have a problem with that?’

  Teschmaker forced the smile off his face so that his pleasure at this development wouldn’t be apparent in his voice. ‘I told you, I’m not —’

  ‘A private detective.’

  ‘But in this case —’

  ‘I suppose you could . . .’

  ‘Make an exception.’ Teschmaker laughed at the verbal tennis rally. ‘Do you know where or when?’

  ‘Zilch. You’ll have to start from scratch. Now, you were ringing me?’

  ‘Yes. I need a bit more information.’

  ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Jane’s father . . .’

  ‘Sydney Morris?’

  The surprised tone was all the proof Teschmaker needed that Sinclair had no idea that Jane’s father was still alive, let alone sequestered away in the country.

  ‘Yes. What do you know about him?’

  ‘Not a hell of a lot. Some kind of physicist, wasn’t he?’

  ‘A long time ago.’

  ‘Probably dead now,’ Sinclair said.

  ‘Didn’t Jane ever say anything
about him?’ Teschmaker realised that he was going to have to push if he was to get anything. Chances were that Oliver Sinclair knew nothing.

  ‘A no-go area.’ Sinclair sounded wistful. ‘I raised it with her early on but all she would ever say was the stuff that is in the public record.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘I had one of my assistants dig up what there was. Apparently Morris had some kind of ideological problem with capitalism. He defected to the Soviets back in the sixties. There was a bit of huff and puff about it at the time but after that he faded from view. A report a couple of years later claimed that he was working on the Soviet nuclear program. It was never verified.’

  ‘And he never made contact with his daughter?’

  ‘Never. I doubt that she would have welcomed it.’

  Teschmaker wondered if he should tell Sinclair that he had seen Sydney Morris, but decided against it. The nuclear angle was interesting but . . .

  ‘Tell me, Oliver, do you think Jane’s interest in the Eastern Bloc countries has some kind of connection with her father?’

  ‘I thought that once. But even with all of her contacts and language skills she’s never tried to find him, as far as I know.’

  ‘Could she have done so without your knowing?’

  ‘Probably,’ Sinclair snorted. ‘But why would she keep it from me?’

  Teschmaker let that one go. As far as he could make out there were a great many things that Jane had failed to mention to her husband. But there was nothing to gain by pointing that out at this particular juncture. ‘Okay, I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘Hang on. Why the questions about Jane’s father?’

  ‘Nothing really. It turns out the man following her was a Russian. I just wondered if there was a connection.’

  ‘And is there?’

  ‘No,’ Teschmaker said. ‘I don’t think so.

  He hung up and reached for the bottle of scotch and poured himself a drink. Start from the centre and work out — isn’t that what he always did? Hell — he laughed out loud. Out where? There were threads leading in so many different directions. A spider web spun by a psychotic spider. And somewhere in the web was Jane. For a moment he played with the notion that she might be the spider. No, she was not spinning this one. Jane was caught in the web just as surely as . . .

  He shook his head and tossed down the remainder of the drink. Had he been about to say that he too was caught in the web? No, Teschmaker reassured himself. I’m simply an observer. And I have no investment in any of this other than the enjoyment of playing the watcher. In the end it was probably all about sex. Jane was simply having an affair and dabbling in bondage. But how did the Russian fit in? Had he taken the photographs? No. That made no sense at all. Or Viola’s master — what had he called him? Master Francis. Now he was a definite candidate for the role of fetishistic photographer. Good old-fashioned sex and bondage. Not his cup of tea. But it obviously did it for some. What had he read somewhere? I seek the love that is more cruel than pain. He ran the thought around for a moment and wondered, as he poured another drink, if love without pain was love at all?

  The following evening, just on dusk, Teschmaker drove over to Charlottewood and positioned himself in Haycroft Avenue ready to follow Jane. All afternoon the humidity had been rising, dark clouds massing in the west. As he waited the wind picked up and the temperature began to drop as the first rain squalls swept across the city. It was a mixed blessing. Rain made a tail harder to spot but also made the job of tailing somebody that much more difficult. He started the engine and rolled the car a little closer to Jane’s gate. So far the summer had been dry, with clear days and unseasonably cool nights, but after a burst of warmth it looked as though the weather was going to swing around to the south-west and turn really nasty. Even as he thought it, he felt the car buffeted by stronger winds and in the distance lightning illuminated swollen clouds.

  ‘Damn.’ Teschmaker swore out loud as the car windows began to fog up, forcing him to roll down the side window. Rain blew straight in and he rolled the window up again, buffing at the windshield with his hand. This was a night to spend at home. He corrected himself: ‘home’ was a concept hardly applicable to the emptied-out shell he was living in. But it was in many ways a more comfortable existence than that which he had shared with Gwenda. Her infidelities — and his — had made a mockery of their marriage for many years. Thankfully he was pulled from that depressing thought by the intrusion into the dark street of a set of headlights. As the car turned into Haycroft Avenue he was briefly washed by its lights. Without pausing the car drove past and turned into a tree-lined driveway two houses behind him. A false alarm.

  There was still no sign of movement at Jane’s house. Had she gone out straight from work? Hardly likely, but he had to admit he really had no idea. Face it, he lectured himself, you have not the slightest evidence on which to base any presumptions about Jane. She was even more of an enigma now than when he had started with the discovery of the photograph from their childhood.

  Outside the rain bucketed down and a flash of lightning nearer at hand was followed by a percussive clap of thunder that was close enough to make him flinch. In the holiday shack at Keynes he and his father had always counted the seconds between ‘flash and crash’. ‘A fascination with thunder and lightning is a fascination with your own fear of death,’ Alexi Teschmaker had once said. The young Martin hadn’t really understood at the time.

  Still nothing from Jane’s house. He glanced at the clock on the dashboard. Was it really nearly nine? Or was the clock faulty? He knew he couldn’t risk turning on the interior light but then he remembered that the glove box had a small light that came on when it was opened. He pressed the catch and peered at the dial of his watch. The car clock was slow: it was nine fifteen.

  Twenty minutes later, just as the car was getting cold enough to make him consider turning on the motor and running the heater for a few minutes, a light switched on at the front of the house. It was only a glimmer over the wall but enough for him to know that someone was preparing to leave the premises. But five minutes passed and there was no sign of movement. No car backed out; and the gates remained firmly shut. Another false alarm. Now the rain was drumming on the roof with such ferocity that he became concerned it might turn to hail and damage the car. Between flash and crash there was now no time to count anything. Far from depressing him, the intensity of the storm had a strangely energising effect. Teschmaker felt all charged up. Coinciding with the lifting of his blue mood, a yellow Volvo turned into the street. Unlike the previous vehicle that had homed itself like an obedient pigeon, the Volvo was cruising slowly, looking for somewhere unfamiliar. So, she was being picked up?

  Teschmaker’s guess was right. As the car drew level with the gates of Jane’s house they opened and a figure, bent almost double against the rain, scuttled through. The rear kerbside door opened and the person got in. For a moment the Volvo sat there, then pulled out slowly and did a U-turn. Where the hell did anyone go to just before ten at night?

  Teschmaker knew he had a problem. There appeared to be few other cars on the road and this late on a wet night he was going to stand out like — what was the expression his father had always used? Like tits on a bishop. Checking his lights were off, he turned on the engine and eased the car into gear. Fortunately the weather was so foul that the Volvo was taking its time, cruising slowly back in the direction of the city. Hopefully its rear window would be fogged up and the driver more worried about the elements than being followed; nevertheless he knew he couldn’t take a risk. He kept the lights off and stayed well back. Now the rain was coming in sheets; even in normal circumstances he would have had difficulty seeing where he was going. To compound the problem it appeared that the street lights had been knocked out by the ongoing electrical storm. Ahead the traffic lights near the Charlotte River Bridge were blinking on and off in amber distress.

  Teschmaker knew that if they took the Belmont ramp onto the Mitchell Freeway he
would have to use his lights, and silently prayed there would still be enough traffic at this time of night to allow him at least minimal cover. He was in luck. As he swung onto the ramp a late-night delivery van and a small sedan sped past in a flurry of spray. Teschmaker switched on his lights and crossed into the freeway lane behind the yellow Volvo. After a few minutes the sedan changed lanes and sped away, but the van stayed put, seven or eight car lengths behind the Volvo with Jane inside. At least I hope it’s Jane, Teschmaker thought. He really had no way of knowing.

  Overhead the lightning was heading inland towards the hills. The rain was probably also on the decrease, but tucked as he was behind the spray from the van it was hard to judge. He turned the wipers on full and swung into the outside lane. But to his dismay the tail-lights of the Volvo veered off down an exit in the other direction. Teschmaker slammed on the brakes. It was too wet and the car slid sideways; for one sickening moment he thought he was going to hit the rear of the van. Behind him another car was forced to brake and for a split second he saw it in his rear-view mirror, slewing sideways and heading for the guard rail.

  Somehow Teschmaker managed to keep control of the BMW and slid behind the van towards the exit ramp. Suddenly he was heading into the dark. He fought for control as the car bucketed over the low end of a concrete hump that divided the highway from the exit ramp. With more good luck than skill he found himself heading down the exit without hitting anything or smashing the sump on the road divider.

  ‘Fuck this!’ he swore, more to let off steam than at anything in particular. The road curved around to the left to where a set of traffic lights controlled the entrance to a major road. Before he had time to work out where he was he saw that the lights were red and that he had no option other than to pull up directly behind the late-model yellow Volvo. Fortunately the driver had not turned on the rear demister, affording Teschmaker a slight amount of protection. You are getting too paranoid, he told himself, they have no idea they are being tailed. He rolled up close enough so that he was hidden from the wing mirrors. Unfortunately he had no view of the people inside and so was still uncertain if Jane was on board or not.