Europe in Winter

by Dave Hutchinson

  “You’ve found out where the Line’s money came from?” As far as most people were concerned, the Line had been funded by pots of gold found at the end of rainbows. Journalists and conspiracy theorists had been trying to identify the Trans-European Republic’s infamously shy founders for decades.

  “Well, yes, some of it,” said Lev. “I was working from the other end, though. I don’t have any names yet, just a bunch of hedge funds and anonymous trusts and offshore accounts. As I said, it’s not all that surprising; there’s only a finite number of people with money like that.”

  “That’s...” Rudi thought about it. “That’s a colossal amount of money.”

  “Of course it is. You think they built the Line with coupons?”

  Rudi looked out across the Strait. “Okay,” he said. “Thanks for letting me know.” He hung up and dropped the phone in his pocket. The ferry was starting to manoeuvre into the harbour at Kuivastu. He picked up his rucksack and started to head down to the exit doors.

  A YOUNG MAN wearing the dark blue uniform of a Lahemaa park ranger was waiting at the bottom of the gangplank. Rudi entertained a brief notion of ignoring him and walking on by, but that was never going to solve anything, so he walked up to him.

  “Hello,” he said. “Are you waiting for me?”

  The young man looked him up and down – quite possibly measuring him against his father, Rudi had seen that look before – and put out a hand. “Kustav.”

  They shook hands. “Can I help you with your bag?” Kustav asked.

  “No, I’m fine,” Rudi told him.

  Kustav looked at him again – the cane, the careworn look, the nondescript clothes. Not for the first time, Rudi thought he ought to dress like an International Man of Mystery, just to confuse people. “Okay. Well, I’m parked over here.”

  ‘Over here’ turned out to be a Park Hummer, looking somewhat out of place on this mostly flat, sparsely-populated, juniper-strewn island. It had also been scrupulously cleaned and waxed. “Where are you staying?” Kustav asked when they were strapped in.

  “I’m booked into a guest-house in Soonda.”

  “Okay.” Kustav started the engine and put the vehicle into gear. “That’s not far.”

  “PERSONALLY, I THINK this is a disgrace,” Kustav said when they had left Kuivastu and the line of cars and coaches waiting to board the ferry.

  “What’s that?”

  Kustav waved a hand at the scenery going by outside the Hummer. “This.”

  Oh. “I hardly think he’s going to mind.”

  “Fucking government,” Kustav muttered.

  “He did try to secede the Park from Estonia,” Rudi pointed out. “You can sort of understand them being vindictive.”

  “It’s not right.”

  “It is, however, in character.”

  Kustav glanced over and gave him a look which confirmed to Rudi that he had, indeed, bought heart and soul into the Cult of Toomas.

  “He wouldn’t listen,” said Kustav. “Man his age, riding around the park on a quadbike. We told him and he wouldn’t listen.”

  Rudi had found, down the years, that it was possible to judge how long someone had known his father by parsing statements like we told him and he wouldn’t listen. Only people who had more or less only just met Toomas still thought there was any point in trying to tell him anything. And nobody who had known him for more than a couple of years could fail to acknowledge the essentially comic nature of his death.

  “Who’s running things now?” he asked.

  “Priidu’s Head Ranger.”

  “Will Priidu be coming?”

  Kustav didn’t answer, which told Rudi everything he needed to know. Of course Priidu wasn’t coming. Nobody else was coming; they’d sent their most junior colleague, just to keep up appearances.

  The guest house in Soonda, a little village near the centre of the island, was actually a farm. Kustav drove the Hummer into the farmyard, and from the bits and pieces of squeaky-clean agricultural equipment carefully arranged here and there it was obvious to Rudi that it had been a while since anyone had done any farming here. The outbuildings surrounding the yard had all been converted into comfy-looking cottages, and Rudi saw a sign pointing down a path towards a ‘Children’s Zoo’. Probably goats and sheep and rabbits. Maybe an alpaca or two, if the children were lucky. He stood beside the Hummer feeling sad and a little empty.

  “I’ll pick you up tomorrow morning at eleven,” Kustav told him from inside the car.

  “It’s only down the road,” Rudi said. “I can walk.”

  Kustav looked at him for a few moments, then he said, “Okay,” and reversed back up the track towards the road. Rudi watched him go, and he stood looking up the track for a long time after the sound of the Hummer’s engine had faded into the distance before turning and walking over to the farmhouse to check in.

  IT SEEMED TO Rudi that the chief emotions he had felt for his father for almost his entire life were frustration and anger. And really, he thought that was fair enough. His father had been selfish and mean and whiny and manipulative and the only two things he had ever believed in wholeheartedly were Baltic folk songs and the Lahemaa National Park. He’d risen to the post of Head Ranger of the Park, and dug his evil little fingers into the place so deeply that even after what would normally have been regarded as retirement age, even after Rudi’s brother Ivari had succeeded him, nobody could dismiss him.

  All of that had changed when Toomas decided to turn the Park into a sovereign nation. Rudi had missed the violent end to that particular scheme, but he knew Toomas had been unceremoniously dumped out of Lahemaa in the aftermath. Some of his mates in the folk song community had crowdfunded a flat for him in Rakvere, and cobbled together a small stipend to replace the pension which the government stubbornly refused to pay him on the grounds that he was lucky not to have been jailed for treason. He still had fans among the Rangers, though, and in spite of an order banning him from ever setting foot in the Park again he spent most of his time there, happily doing the things he had been doing for almost thirty years. Including riding quadbikes all over the Park in spite of being in his eighties, until one day the throttle and steering of his bike had jammed and he had driven off a promontory into the Gulf of Finland. When he heard the news, Rudi had imagined his father clinging to the handlebars like grim death, afraid to jump in case he got hurt, and simply sailing into the void, and he had giggled.

  It was less than half a kilometre’s walk along the main road to Liiva and St Catherine’s Church, a black and white building which looked like several pointy-roofed structures of varying size stuck together. A number of mourners were standing outside, and even from the other side of the church grounds Rudi could separate them into two groups. The really old people who were standing in a loose bunch near the door of the church were the folk song guys, and he wanted nothing to do with them because that would mean having to listen to their stories about how great his father had been. Everyone else was... well, just everyone else. He looked around the mourners, but he didn’t see his brother’s widow. Frances had had a complicated relationship with Toomas – everyone did – but her relationship with Rudi was more straightforward. She had never forgiven him for missing Ivari’s funeral, and he had judged that telling her the truth – that he had been unable to attend because he had been kidnapped by English special forces and held prisoner in London – would be unproductive at best.

  “Hey, boy.”

  Rudi turned and found himself looking at the deeply seamed and florid face of Juhan, infamous rocker, bass player with any number of catastrophically self-destructive bands, and his father’s oldest friend. He felt his heart sink in his chest.

  “Juhan,” he said.

  Juhan was wearing skinny black jeans, a black T-shirt, and a massive black leather jacket with jangly silver zippers, which hung from his shoulders like the wings of a pterodactyl. In appearance, it was as if Somerset Maugham had, in the final years of his life, decided to t
ake up death metal.

  “You came, then,” Juhan said, peering myopically at him.

  “Yes,” Rudi said. “I came. I cannot deny that. Here I am.”

  Juhan tipped his head to one side; he looked so frail that Rudi wondered how he intended to return it to its upright position. “Don’t be smart with me, boy,” he snapped. Rudi waited for a follow-up along the lines of ‘I was wrestling alligators when you were still soiling your nappy,’ but none came.

  He shrugged. “Okay.”

  “You hated the old bastard.”

  “Yes, I did.” It was hardly confidential.

  “So what are you doing here?”

  “I wanted to check out Pädaste’s new chef and I thought I’d kill two birds with one stone,” Rudi deadpanned.

  “Cheeky little cocksucker,” said Juhan, who was at least a foot shorter than Rudi. “Don’t you have a hug for your Uncle Juhan?”

  “Firstly, you’re not my uncle,” said Rudi, “and secondly, I’d be afraid of snapping you like a dry twig,” but he hugged the old man anyway, and discovered that Juhan was considerably stronger than he looked, and determined to prove it.

  “So,” Juhan said when he had finished compressing Rudi’s ribs, “you’re in Poland now?”

  “Sometimes. I get about a lot.” Rudi wondered if Juhan hadn’t actually broken something. He squirmed discreetly to try and return some of his internal organs to their original positions. He looked over Juhan’s head and saw someone walking towards them from the direction of the church, so out of context that for a moment he couldn’t work out where he had seen her before. It was her hat he actually recognised first.

  “Chief Superintendent,” he said as she reached them. “Forgive me if I briefly comment on the surreal nature of meeting you here.”

  Smith beamed at him. “Aren’t you going to introduce us?”

  Rudi suppressed a scowl. “Chief Superintendent, this is Juhan Salumäe, an old friend of my father. Juhan, this is Detective Chief Superintendent Sarah Smith of the EU Police.”

  Juhan looked Smith up and down with undisguised lasciviousness. He nudged Rudi. “Been naughty, hey, boy?” and they all laughed except Rudi, who was staring at Smith.

  Smith looked benignly at Juhan and smiled radiantly. “Mr Salumäe,” she said. “Have you ever been back to the Savoy?”

  All of a sudden, Juhan seemed to be two hundred years older. “I need to talk to somebody,” he said, and he turned and walked away towards the church.

  “Savoy?” Rudi asked when he was out of earshot.

  “Misspent youth,” Smith said. “He still owes them four hundred quid. How are you?”

  “Oh, I’m super, thank you. What are you doing here?”

  Smith pouted. “Everybody has to be somewhere.”

  Rudi leaned on his cane and said, “Did you know my father, Chief Superintendent? Because if you didn’t, I have to admit I can’t come up with a single reason why you should be here.”

  “Your father?” Smith looked thoughtful. “No.”

  “You do know this is his funeral.” He waved at the church, the mourners, Juhan standing watching them.

  “Yes,” she said. “Yes. My condolences. Were you close?”

  “There were times when I would cheerfully have killed him myself.”

  “Not close, then.” Smith smiled. “We’ve identified the chap who was carrying the photograph.”

  “You’ve come to tell me that?”

  “No, I may have come to arrest you.”

  Rudi rubbed his face. “All right, Chief Superintendent, you have my undivided attention.”

  “Robert James Spencer,” said Smith, and this time she wasn’t smiling at all. “Age thirty-eight, formerly of 22 Special Air Service Regiment. That’s English Special Forces. He was invalided out four years ago; roadside bomb in Damascus.”

  “I told you, I don’t know him.”

  “We’ve managed to reconstruct his movements in the week or so before he tried to enter Poland. He seems to have travelled a great deal on false passports.”

  Rudi sensed where this was going, and braced himself. “Yes?”

  “It seems he was in the Sakha Republic at the same time that a member of a visiting Community delegation was assassinated.”

  Rudi frowned. “I hadn’t heard about that.”

  “And you won’t; there was a total blackout, witnesses sequestered, everything. We can’t prove Spencer was responsible, but he was there and he had sniper training when he was with the SAS. It seems someone’s been feeding him some very odd medication. He’s in a terrible state.”

  “I still don’t know him,” Rudi said. “And if you’re going down the road of assuming he’s a Coureur, don’t. They don’t do assassination.”

  “That you know of.”

  “Chief Superintendent, there is no life on Pluto that I know of. Come on. Please.” He looked over to the church; people were starting to go in. “I need to go.”

  Smith followed his gaze. “Yes, of course.”

  “Who died, by the way? In Sakha?”

  “Ah,” she said. “That’s interesting. He was with the Community delegation visiting this biodome or whatever it is, but he wasn’t from the Community. Turns out he was actually a citizen of Dresden-Neustadt.”

  Rudi had a good poker face. “Oh?”

  “Chap named Mundt. Ring any bells?”

  “No.”

  “Former citizen of the Neustadt, I should say,” Smith corrected herself. “It’s a very confused situation. Jurisdiction is a nightmare.”

  Rudi said, “I have nothing to do with this and I can’t help you, Chief Superintendent. I don’t know this man Spencer, I have no idea who he is or what he wants, and I have no idea why he was carrying that photo. It’s as much a mystery to me as it is to you. More so, I suspect.”

  Smith was studying his face. He had not had any dealings with EUPol before, but it suddenly occurred to him that she had quite an unusual way of doing things. He said, “May I see your ID again, please?”

  “Of course.” She took the card out and held it in front of his face. They both knew how easy it was to forge pretty much any kind of document these days – certainly in terms of a visual examination – but he thought it was important to make the point.

  “Thank you,” he said, after what he thought was a reasonable interval. “I can’t help you, Chief Superintendent,” he said again. “I wish I could, if only to get you to leave me alone. Now, are you going to arrest me? Because if you’re not, I should attend my father’s funeral.”

  “I’m not going to arrest you,” she said. “Today.”

  He sighed.

  “Go,” said Smith. “You’ve got my details if you think of anything to tell me. I’m staying at Pädaste Manor tonight, if you feel like having dinner.”

  “Your expense claims must be a thing to behold.”

  “That’s the great thing about the EU,” she said with a smile. “Lots of money, but hardly any members to spend it on these days.” And with that she turned to go. “See you later.”

  Rudi watched her walk away, mentally cursing in several European languages. He’d been looking forward to trying out Pädaste’s tasting menu. He looked towards the church, where several aged men were carrying what seemed to be a long laundry basket on their shoulders. His father had arrived.

  NO ONE KNEW where Leo had put Mundt, which was unfortunate. A lot of people, so far as Rudi knew, had spent a lot of time and resources trying to find the Professor in the intervening years. He was among them. And now... what? He turned up as part of a Community delegation in Sakha – and what the hell had they been doing all the way out there? – and someone had assassinated him. There was just too much Story there to process all at once.

  Rudi thought about all this while he stood at the back of the church and watched his father’s funeral. Toomas had left only two instructions about what to do after his death, apparently. The first was that he was to have a Humanist funeral, and th
e second was that he wanted to be buried in Lahemaa.

  The latter was never going to happen, not unless his mates wanted to bury him in secret at midnight. There was a surprising amount of paperwork involved with interring bodies, and the moment the authorities got the merest sniff that Toomas wanted to be buried in the Park they dusted down their rage at his abortive attempt at Independence and turned the application down flat. This man committed treason and you want to bury him in the Park? Stick him in a bag and drop him in the Gulf of Finland instead. Fuck him.

  The folk song guys had cast around for alternate venues and come up with St Catherine’s, it seemed, simply because the Lutheran pastor here had proven less resistant to a Humanist ceremony than anyone else they had approached.

  Down at the front of the church, the wicker coffin containing the remains of his father – what remains had finally washed up some distance along the coast, anyway – stood on two trestles. The celebrant was standing beside it, talking about Toomas’s invaluable contributions to the Estonian folk song community. Rudi tuned him out and looked around the church. Some of the folk singers were in national costume. Kustav was sitting a couple of rows behind them in his uniform, head bowed. Juhan was in a pew on the other side of the aisle. There was no one else there that Rudi recognised, even slightly.

  It occurred to him that the last time he had visited the land of his birth had been for a funeral, too. Sergei Fedorovich, the chef who had first introduced him to restaurant cooking, had finally succumbed to an aneurysm in the middle of a spectacular rant at one of his waitresses. That funeral had been enormous fun; the food had been fantastic, there was a colossal amount of alcohol, chefs from kitchens up and down the Baltic had come to pay their respects, ethnic Estonians and Russians had put aside their differences for a while. Everyone called him ‘Ruudi,’ the proper form of his name, and it sounded strange to him. He’d long ago stopped trying to correct everyone else in Europe who mispronounced it. Anyway, in Estonian rudi meant to bruise, which he had found, down the years, that he rather liked. The wake had lasted for two days, his hangover for three. He suspected that wasn’t going to be the case here; Toomas and his pals had an unnatural capacity for booze, but money was tight. He had no interest in seeing what the funeral meal was like. It was going to offend him professionally and he was going to wind up talking to strangers he couldn’t care less about. He checked his watch, considering getting the next available ferry back to the mainland.