by Craig Thomas
‘Teplov owns the brothel, but he’s not into drugs. We’ve established that.’
‘There’s nothing from the passengers on Hussain’s flight, not so far. Or from the crew. Most of the workers are out on the rigs now, anyway. Company buses collected them.’
‘And your contact — our only contact?’
Dmitri shook his head mournfully. ‘He’s keeping away. Or trying to. Or they’re keeping away from him.’
‘OKr then we’ll raid. Brief a team, but don’t tell them where.’
There was a quick knock at the door and it opened before he could speak. Marfa Tostyeva entered, dragging her woollen hat from her head, unwinding the long scarf from her neck. Her eyes appeared blurred and her nose reddened.
‘You better?’ Vorontsyev asked.
She slumped on a hard chair, breathing stertorously.
‘Fine. I’ve just caught up with the taxi driver, Noskov. Want to hear what I found out?’ She drew her notebook from her coat pocket and opened it, oblivious of Vorontsyev’s puzzlement until she once more looked up.
‘What is it?’ she asked, shrugging.
‘Taxi driver?’
‘The man who picked up Rawls, the American, just before he was murdered. Remember — sir?’ The sarcasm was obvious.
Vorontsyev squinted against the sunlight streaming across his desk. The frost glittered on the windows.
‘It’s not our case,’ he offered. ‘It’s been taken over by GRU ‘
‘Do you realise how much effort it was, with a stinking cold, tracing that driver? He was never at home, I couldn’t get Traffic to help I’
He held up his hands.
‘AH right. Make your report. I’ll pass it on, with your compliments.
By the way, we’re raiding Teplov’s place tonight.’
‘I heard about the other raid.’ She looked gloomy. ‘I’m sorry it feJ] so flat,’ she offered to Dmitri, who shrugged in response.
Then she looked at once at her notebook and announced:
‘Apparently, this Noskov ferried Rawls around for most of the week … unusual. Rawls didn’t use a GraingerTurgenev limousine, or drive himself. Noskov has one of the newer taxis, I’ll admit, but it isn’t a big ZiL or a Merc’ She cleared her throat, not looking up. ‘Rawls made most of the calls you’d expect, around the GraingerTurgenev headquarters, other companies
— twice up to the rigs, five times to the hospital, in all … must have had the trots.’ She smirked.
‘Anything important?’ Vorontsyev asked impatiently.
‘Sorry — not sleeping again, sir?’ Marfa replied.
‘Don’t push it.’
‘Sorry,’ she replied stiffly.
‘I’ll pass that on to Bakunin.’ Marfa closed her notebook audibly, to the accompaniment of a strained sigh. ‘Right. Tonight.
We know Teplov’s made money on the side renting rooms, cupboards and outside privies to illegal workers on the field. He’s hidden them, fleeced them, covered for them, even supplied papers … perhaps he thought he would dabble in heroin, after all!’ The empty glasses littered the tables around the pool. The evening breeze off the desert was warm. Napkins blown from the tables lay like jellyfish at the clear bottom of the pool. The last guests had long gone, flitting blackly in the afternoon sunlight, away from the intensity of grief Vaughn Grainger had been unable to conceal. Or perhaps from his own reticent, intense quiet, repelling as surely as an electrical field. A guard fence.
John Lock sat down at one of the tables, the umbrella above his head crackling like a flag in the breeze. Phoenix was emerging from the darkening desert in strips and gobbets of neon; as if the contents of a foundry ladle, some incandescent metal, had been spilt on the desert floor. The mountains were distant, like barely cowed great animals waiting for the night. He shivered unaccountably. Poured a glass of champagne, the bottle slithering in the melted ice of the bucket. The house behind him threatened insistently. He had no idea, nor possessed any wish to know, where in the house Grainger was. The housekeeper or the butler could see to him, for the moment.
He had, out of habit rather than the remotest interest, paged his answerphone at the apartment. More messages of sympathy
— so that he wished he had not reconnected the machine — the early music group, the woman’s prim voice grating on him like that of a disliked teacher, the Kennedy Center regarding reserved tickets he had ordered for himself and Beth as a late birthday surprise … and Johanna, diffident and awkwardly offering a pinched, embarrassed sympathy — I’m realty sorry, John — but all the messages seemed like indecipherable signals from distant galaxies, meaning less and less.
He wished — Christ in Heaven, how he wished — not to feel as he did. But there was nothing to fill up his emptiness. The place he inhabited was devoid of everything, and he didn’t have the ability, the will, to refurnish it. It would remain empty.
He swallowed the barely cool champagne and poured himself another glass. The city brightened in the dusk, spread out below Camelback Mountain. Grainger’s estate was perched amid new trees and a security fence on the mountainside, proprietorially overlooking Phoenix. An aircraft drifted towards Sky Harbor airport, its lights against the first stars. A napkin hurried across the tiles towards the pool like a bird to the water. The hummingbirds had disappeared with the sun.
He had to get away. Vaughn had the servants — and there was nothing he could do to alleviate the man’s mental distress. He could only be another servant in the house — the house which oppressed him with illusions of peace, with the suggestion of a place outside time. He needed to get back to Washington, back into some kind of numbing routine. But the old man clung to him, as tightly as a blind man stranded on a crowded freeway.
The maid appeared at the open windows, and he waved her enquiring look away. She disappeared. The patio’s Italian tiles gleamed palely in the gloom, the great hacienda-style house glowed with curtained lights. The doctor had promised to sedate the old man before he left.
The telephone rang, startling him, his hand automatically reaching out for it. Someone must have asked to make a call earlier, and the phone had been brought out to this table. He picked up the receiver before remembering that one of the servants could have answered it.
‘Yes? Sorry — this is the Grainger residence.’ His servantlike tone caused him to smile.
‘I wish to speak person-to-person with Mr Vaughn Grainger.
Please put me through.’
‘I’m sorry, he can’t take your call right now’
As if another and entirely different conversation had begun, he heard: ‘I wish to convey my sympathies, condolences … I have read about the death of his son.’
‘I’ll convey your message, Mr?’
‘I wish to convey my sentiments personally to Mr Grainger.’
‘I’m afraid he’s under sedation at the moment. I’ll get your message to him as soon as he wakes. It’s Mr — ?’ Someone Asian, he knew from the sibilants, the slight slitherings around consonants.
Then, as if it were a third conversation, one from another context altogether: ‘Tell Grain — Mr Grainger that it is urgent I speak with him. Soon. My name is Nguyen Tran.’ Vietnamese then. ‘You will tell him.’ It was not a question.
‘I’ll tell him. He has your number?’
‘I am here in Phoenix at the moment, on business. I am staying I at the Biltmore.’ A deliberate softening, then. ‘I am an old friend of Mr Grainger.’ But an old friend who didn’t come to the funeral. Lock thought. Then the abrupt demand of: ‘Nguyen Tran. I know he would wish you to wake him. I suggest you do so. I’ll be waiting for his call.’
‘Goodbye,’ Lock offered to the hum of the receiver.
He put down the phone, outraged on Grainger’s behalf at the insensitivity of the Vietnamese man. Some business deal, some document or loan or investment — Jesus! The guy evidently wasn’t a Buddhist … He grinned. Then either the breeze or the chill of the words made him shiver. Nguyen Tr
an was … threatening Vaughn Grainger. He had power over him, his impatience would unnerve the old man. The substance of the message was that Grainger couldn’t afford to keep the Vietnamese waiting for an answer.
Someone else, he reflected, just like Turgenev — someone Vaughn Grainger is afraid of, or is expected to be afraid of…
The house seemed insubstantial now, and perched in an act of madness or hubris on the mountainside. And the breeze was colder. He could explain neither disconcerting impression.
‘Look, Noskov — my chief wasn’t impressed with your story. I’m back to make sure you make it sound better.’ Marfa Tostyeva grinned at the taxi driver as she slammed the door of his cab.
It was third in the rank outside the Gogol Hotel. Other drivers stamped in the morning air, slapped their hands against their arms, breaths fuming.
‘I gave you the whole story. There’s nothing else — officer.’ He swept his hand along the dashboard behind the steering wheel, as if removing dust. The three-year-old French saloon was without smells, its heater worked, its upholstery was unstained.
But why did Rawls use it? He had access to a gas company limousine, a Merc or a stretched ZiL, which GraingerTurgenev used to impress their Russian credentials on officials from Moscow. He’d taken the Renault on an exclusive-hire basis.
For less money, he could have hired a better car from Hertz.
‘What’s the American done?’ Noskov asked slily.
‘Got himself killed. Don’t you read the papers?’ She relaxed into the passenger seat, luxuriating in the warmth of the heater.
Noskov looked as if he was contemplating broaching the subject of a bribe, the universal currency.
‘I saw that— you told me, anyway. But you sound as if you’re after him, not the killer?’
No, she thought. And I’m not supposed to be here at all. Off limits. But she was — because the major had rubbed against her enthusiasm with his indifference, and the use of the taxi for the whole week of Rawls’ stay in Novyy Urengoy intrigued her.
‘Just be more expansive, Noskov.’
‘Or what?’
‘I can make trouble for you — small trouble, maybe, but irritating.
OK?’
‘OK/ he replied sourly. His clothes smelt of stale sweat in the warm interior. Why would Rawls, with his manicured hands, want to sit behind this man in his old, stale donkey-jacket for a whole week?
‘You took him to the hospital, you drove out to one of the nearer rigs, you took him to the helicopter for his other trip oui.
Tell me everything about the last evening, when you picked him up from here and took him out there to be killed.’
‘I didn’t have anything I’
‘Well, tell me, then. Maybe I’ll even believe you.’
‘You bloody cops!’
‘That’s right. Shame you aren’t being questioned by one of your pals from headquarters … All right, all right, I’m not making enquiries about whoever you pay or do favours for or who’s got some hold over you. Just Rawls. That evening.’
He shunted the cab forward to second in the rank. One of the expensive whores had disappeared into a battered American saloon, a chiffon scarf trailing from the shoulder of her mink.
High heels, slim legs. Made you envious just to look Noskov, watching her, was grinning with insight.
‘That evening,’ she announced like a threat.
‘Like I told you, I drove him out there and he said it would be all right, just to head back to town. He’d be in touch in the morning.’ He shrugged. ‘That’s it.’
Marfa sighed. ‘What time — here, I mean?’
‘Afler midnight. I was going to bed. He rang me.’
‘You came — he was waiting?’
He nodded, rubbing his stubbled, pointed chin. ‘He was talking to Antipov, the commissionaire. Like I told you before.’
‘He got straight in?’
‘Yes.’
‘What mood was he in?’
‘Pleased with himself. He usually was. Why not? He had plenty of money, a big job. I was just a peasant.’
‘But the tips were good.’ She looked at her notebook, thumbing back through the pages. ‘Did you see the limo waiting outside here when you picked Rawls up?’
‘Where was it?’ Noskov asked quietly.
‘Antipov, the night porter, says on the other side of the street, perhaps forty metres away — over there,’ she pointed, twisting in the seat.
‘Maybe.’
‘Did you notice it following you?’
‘There was still a bit of traffic. I didn’t notice anything specially.’
Marfa stared at him. Natural shiftiness, she decided. He’d say only what he had to. She nodded.
‘You must have seen it come to a halt, out there — when you dropped Rawls off.’
‘There — well, maybe. I didn’t think about it much. Just wanted my bed.’
‘And you didn’t think it was odd, dropping him in the middle of the tundra?’
‘He was paying. He got to say. He said he’d be all right, someone was picking him up. Confidential meeting. That’s what he called it. Out of sight, out of earshot. He wasn’t worried. I don’t think he thought he’d be kept waiting long.’
‘He wasn’t, was he?’
‘I didn’t know-!’ Noskov whined. ‘Do you think I’d get?’
‘Don’t give yourself a coronary. Did you see him get into the limousine that followed you?’
‘I didn’t say it followed us.’
‘Did you see him get into any limousine?’
‘No. He was standing beside the road, the last I saw in the mirrors.’
Marfa flicked through her notes once more. Pondered, then asked: ‘Was there anywhere else you took Rawls — anywhere unusual?’
‘Like the knocking shops? No. He had a whore delivered. Not that night, though.’
‘You picked her up?’ He nodded. ‘Name?’
‘Vera — that’s all I know.’
‘Where did you pick her up?’
‘Cocktail bar of the Sheraton. I don’t know where she lives.’
Marfa scribbled. ‘Anyone else you brought to see Rawls?’ she asked with little enthusiasm.
‘No — oh, only one of the doctors from the hospital. One of the Yankee doctors they have there.’
‘Was Rawls ill?’
‘No. Maybe he had the trots. I took him up there enough times!’
That’s the same joke as last time. My chief didn’t laugh, either.’
‘The word is he doesn’t laugh at anything much.’
‘Would you, policing this dump? Dealing with people like you?’ Then she added: ‘What was the name of this Yankee doctor?’
‘Beats me.’
‘I will, unless you remember.’
‘Smith?’
‘Try again. Why do you like being so obstructive?’
‘Normal behaviour towards the cops — in this dump,’ he retorted. ‘His name was Schneider. Dr David Schneider. Is that it?’ He pulled the cab forward to the head of the rank. ‘I have got a business to run.’
‘And I’d be bad for business? Yes, that’s it.’ Marfa wrapped her coat around her, tightened her scarf, and opened the door.
The comfortable warmth vanished in a moment. ‘Don’t let me catch you on any yellow lines, Noskov!’ He scowled as she shut the door, then mouthed an obscenity behind the window. She grinned and shook her head in mock reproof.
Another well-dressed tart, wrapped in expensive perfume, passed her without a glance. Taller than she, well made-up, but the face was hard and the eyes incapable of illusion; or disillusion.
Suddenly, she felt better at the momentary proximity and the comparisons it suggested. She waved to Noskov and headed for the coffee shop of the hotel.
An American doctor called Schneider, and the black limousine that Noskov had evidently seen and wished to forget. Not because he knew anything, simply because it wasn’t his business and he wasn’t being p
aid to remember, only meekly threatened.
Vorontsyev wouldn’t like it. If he found out …
… he’d have to. Schneider was the deputy director of the Addiction Unit. Why would Rawls want to see him? At his hotel, as if it was a house call? It was worth asking Schneider — but for that, she’d need Vorontsyev’s permission.
‘You’re all going to catch something nasty in here!’ Vorontsyev yelled at the top of his voice.
‘For God’s sake. Major — I’ Teplov, the brothel’s owner, tugged at his sleeve, his habitual unctuous expression replaced by one of — what? A sense of bad taste?
They were crowded in the narrow hallway of the old house, Teplov and his head girl and the two minders confronting Vorontsyev, Marfa, Dmitri, Lubin and the uniformed men behind them. Like two groups rushing in opposite directions, late for trains. The icy night air had hurried over and past them, as if intent upon a raid of its own.
‘Don’t blow the whistle, please, Major!’ Vorontsyev had the instrument at his lips to taunt the brothel owner. The minders seemed perplexed, like the head girl who was carmined, heavily made-up, a mock-silk wrap dragged around her vast proportions.
Vice were usually so much more polite, that much was obvious.
But then, they usually only dropped in for payment in cash or kind.
‘Just make sure no one jumps out of the windows without their trousers, Teplov — it’s brass monkey weather out there.’
He leaned down towards the tiny, effete, bearded man whom it was hard to dislike; impossible to place in strict moral parentheses.
Maria evidently found it easier to summon contempt towards Sonya, the girls’ shop steward and — Vice enjoyed the rumour — the tiny Teplov’s demanding lover. ‘We’re not here to collect, little man, so just let us go about our business without interference, and we’ll try to be as quiet as possible. OK?’
Sonya appeared inclined to debate, but Teplov said:
‘You’ll try not to upset the clients — or my girls, Major?’
Vorontsyev laughed. Lubin was grinning like a child in a toyshop.
Dmitri appeared merely impatient.
‘I’ll try, Teplov — I’ll try.’ He could hear doors opening and closing upstairs. Anyone who took to the windows would be brought back inside by the uniformed men stationed around the house. ‘OK, let’s get on with it. You know what you’re looking for — no lingering, no pilfering.’ Teplov appeared relieved, as if Vorontsyev were some gentlemanly client inclined to sadism but prepared to pay to keep matters quiet.