by Craig Thomas
The uniformed men begafn climbing the stairs. It was difficult to maintain gravitas. He heard someone squeal with pain outside somewhere, and raucous laughter. He grinned.
‘None of the local bigwigs in tonight, Teplov? At least, I hope not…’
Teplov shook his bald head with fervent denial, then seemed to recollect something that contradicted the assurance — which he at once masked beneath compliance, fatalism. Sonya shrugged massively and turned away after visiting Marfa with a withering, superior glare.
‘Hurry it up, we haven’t got all night!’ Dmitri bellowed, mounting the stairs to the first floor landing, where tousled, half-dressed girls were beginning to gather to watch the embarrassment of their clients and to taunt the police.
‘What are you looking for. Major?’ Teplov whispered, as if selling something on the black market. ‘You know I keep my nose clean — and my girls,’ he offered by way of ingratiation.
‘None of your business — unless we find it.’ He slapped the tiny man on one narrow shoulder, turned him around and hustled him towards his office at the rear of the ground floor.
They passed the open doors of the two rooms off the hallway, garishly decorated, red-lit — why always red? — crammed with couches and sofas. Musak played softly. Then the kitchen, where an Iranian-looking man in an apron was slicing vegetables, undistracted.
TepJov’s office was small and neat, like the man. A huge safe that might have been made in the Tsarist period, like the house itself, occupied one corner. His desk was against the wall beneath the window — which, in daylight, looked out over a weedstrewn, dilapidated graveyard and its moribund, stunted church. The rest of the room contained an old, rich Persian carpet and two armchairs, with a low table between them.
Teplov lit a cigarette and coughed at the smoke. Vorontsyev accepted the one he was offered, and the gold lighter, which he weighed in his hand like a grenade.
‘You won’t say keep it, will you?’ he said. Teplov shook his head reproachfully, his brown eyes soulful, misunderstood.
‘Good.’
‘Have a seat, Major.’
‘Thanks. Meanwhile, open the safe.’ Teplov seemed puzzled for an instant, then realised he was not being asked for a bribe in a novel and indirect manner.
‘There aren’t any drugs here. Major. At least, not what you’re looking for. One or two of the girls enjoy cannabis, and who can blame them after a busy evening … one or two of the clients may, unbeknown to me, be in possession. But not dealing.’
‘You’ve heard, then?’
‘That your last effort fell flat — yes. Major.’
‘What else have you heard?’
Teplov was shielding the combination of the massive old safe from him. Then he reluctantly swung the heavy door open.
Vorontsyev squatted on his haunches beside him, riffled the papers, flicked the heaps of notes in their elastic bands, found a photograph of a younger Teplov and a slim Sonya, but made no comment on them or the child the woman was holding; touched chequebooks, account books, ledgers — nothing. He wasn’t disappointed because he had no real expectations. Something might come of interviewing the snatched clients — then again, something might not. He felt lassitude returning, his habitual lack of concern.
‘Close the door.’
He returned to the chair.
‘A drink. Major?’
‘Why not? Scotch.’
Teplov poured the drinks, then sat behind his desk. The whisky was good, expensive.
‘I heard you lost a man the other night. I don’t play those games, or in that league.’
‘You didn’t, that’s true. Perhaps you’ve become ambitious?
People do, when the cops are so bloody useless.’
‘Are you?’ Teplov murmured.
Vorontsyev looked up from his tumbler, startled. His eyes narrowed with suspicion, even resentment.
‘Watch it,’ he muttered. Tepiov shrugged the moment away.
‘If there’s nothing physical here, there’s stuff inside your head.
I ought to take you in and sweat you.’
Teplov appeared unnerved, then said: T make it my business to know nothing.’
‘Why?’
‘You need to ask, when one of your men got blown to pieces?’
‘You’ve been threatened?’ There were footsteps and voices above them, some protests from the hallway and outside the house. Floorboards creaked from the pressure of heavy boots and bullying excitement.
‘No. I just keep away from it. It isn’t here, your conduit or whatever it is you’re looking for. Major.’
‘You’re a clever bastard.’
‘You need to be, in this town. Perhaps you’re not using your intelligence. Major — making waves?’
‘The American who got himself killed — did he ever come here?’
‘No. He’d use one of Kropotkin’s girls, the high-class numbers who hang about the hotels. Special order, personal service.’ He sighed. ‘I had ambitions in that direction, once. Sonya persuaded me not to step out of my league.’
‘And drugs would be—’
‘Stepping out of my league in a big and very dangerous way.’
He leaned forward. ‘Just be careful, Major. You’re tolerant as far as my business is concerned, and Vice asks no more than a reasonable slice’
‘Who?’
‘You don’t really want to know.’ Vorontsyev tossed back the last of the Scotch. ‘But everything I hear — and I have no names, no details, whatever you think — tells me this is big and organised.’
He spread his hands. ‘I don’t think you realise how’
His face became disappointed, as if he had stepped into a muddy ditch while negotiating a narrow path. The shouts were urgent, and from outside. At once, Dmitri was at the door, his face red with intense, exhilarated passion.
‘-jumped out of the window, first floor!’ he gasped. ‘Arab looking — he’d been waiting his chance to have it away!’
Vorontsyev saw knowledge cloud Teplov’s features for an instant before weary indifference masked it. Cognition of something or no more than suspicion, perhaps. He joined Dmitri at the door.
‘Which way was he heading?’
‘Across the graveyard, past the church. We haven’t got enough lights I’
‘Get the car started — I’ll go after him. Meet me on the other side-‘ A collage of angry, nervous, outraged and guilty faces, the painted mockery of the girls’ features, then they were out of the door, their shoes crunching on frozen snow.
Dmitri broke off and made for the car. Vorontsyev bent low, to catch a fleeing figure against the glow from the town. He could see nothing. His breath clouded around his face. A uniformed constable knelt beside him and he heard Lubin clumsily arrive.
The church’s stubby domes appeared like well-used pencils against the nightglow.
‘He was definitely heading for the church, sir,’ the constable explained. ‘I didn’t fire. You said’
‘It’s OK. Come on, let’s get after him.’
The tussocky, frozen ground was awkward, hampering.
Vorontsyev’s foot slipped on the rime of ice on a flat gravestone and he snapped: ‘Constable, use your torch!’
The beam flicked ahead of them. There were black marks on the icy grass, the quarry’s footsteps.
‘What did he look like?’
‘Dark overcoat, small. Arab, I think, sir.’
They reached the church and paused against the wall. Their breathing. Nothing else as Vorontsyev’s heart quietened. He nodded.
‘Keep that torch on the footprints.’
The wall of the church glistened with icy moss and stone.
Their breathing and footsteps echoed like curtains rustling in a breeze. The footprints they were following had not halted with uncertainty, not once. Behind them, the engines of the two arrest wagons were starting up. Protests floated feebly after them.
Why was this man running? Difficult to imagine a memb
er of the town’s executive committee, married or not, suddenly afraid that he couldn’t bribe or bluster his way out of an arrest at Teplov’s brothel. Or a policeman or a company executive — anyone, in reality, would be more concerned at their coitus having been interruptus than the round-up of the usual suspects.
He heard a car engine start; deep, big engine. A screech of tyres.
The churchyard led onto a narrow, twisting street of the cramped old town, little wider than an alley. He saw headlights spring out — where the hell was Dmitri?
‘Quick!’ he urged as they crunched down the weedstrewn gravel to the drunken gate. The big car was pulling away, taillights flaring. ‘Shit!’
‘— tyres?’ he heard.
‘Fat chance! Where’s Dmitri?’
The big car — black Merc? — turned a narrow corner out of sight, its headlights flashing out like distress signals from gaps in the houses lining another narrow alley. Then his own car screeched into view, bucking towards them. He heard a dog barking. He was caught in the headlights as he crossed in front of the car, then dragged the door open as he reached the passenger side and the car halted. Lubin bundled himself into the rear but the constable was too slow. Dmitri screeched away, leaving him bemusedly watching their disappearance.
Which way?’
‘Left!’
The car banged against a dustbin or perhaps a low barrow left in the alleyway. There was no sign of the Merc’s lights — it was a Merc, he confirmed. Dark coat, Merc, not wanting to be questioned — who? Why?
The old town pressed about them, narrow, shrunken houses, picket fences marking off plots of snow that sparkled in the headlights, in front of dachas and other low wooden buildings trapped within the loom of the surrounding high-rises. Russia’s past flared in a series of half-images in the car’s lights.
‘Left again!’
He wouldn’t have gone this way, it was too narrow, perhaps he wouldn’t know it… must be heading for one of the well-lit, busy streets, to lose himself. This was quicker, if he’d guessed right. A terrified face in a dark doorway, headscarved and wrinkled. A dog skittering away from the headlights and the front wheels. They ran over something that made the car buck.
Lubin was leaning forward between them. Dmitri wiped at the fugged windscreen.
‘Next rightV
The car slewed into a twisting sidestreet, careering across unmarked snow — hadn’t come this way, then, good — scraping its flank along a dilapidated fence that gave way and fell into the snow. A few scattered lights from the low bungalows and dachas, and from broken, still-inhabited houses -
lights, traffic.
‘F Street!’ Dmitri exclaimed. ‘Near 17th.’
‘Wait!’ Vorontsyev snapped.
The car nosed out of the old town like a hungry urchin dog.
Vorontsyev craned forward in his seat, peering each way along F Street. Offices mostly, some blocks of apartments. Neater, quieter than most of the grid of streets and avenues of the artificial town. Pedestrians, homegoing traffic, mid-evening busyness.
Black Merc? It should come out of He sighed.
There he is,’ he murmured triumphantly.
The black limousine turned out of Mockba Prospekt, a block away from them, at once hurrying into the thin traffic, skidding then righting itself on the gritted thoroughfare. The driver, invisible behind the windscreen, accelerated towards them.
‘Get out in front of him — no bloody chase, just stop him!’
Vorontsyev yelled. He fastened his seatbelt and Lubin dropped back into the safety of the rear seat.
Dmitri accelerated violently out of the sidestreet and the Merc seemed to pause in stunned surprise. Dmitri slewed the car across the street, trying to corral the Merc onto the opposite pavement. Suddenly, the black limousine came on, seeming to hurtle directly at Vorontsyev. He tensed against the impact, leaning away from the door as much as he couJd. The Merc swerved, but was still coming on as Dmitri held it in a narrowing perspective, channelling it towards Collision.
The door buckled inwards, against his thigh, tearing his trousers. The car shied away from the impact with the heavier Merc. Lubin was cursing in the rear, Dmitri’s forehead was bleeding from impact with the windscreen, which was smeared but not shattered”, he realised. Merc?
It had collided with a brick-faced pillar, one of a row forming an archway over the pavement, making more elegant a row of discreet, expensive shops where gangsters purchased things alongside oil and gas executives. Spoons for cocaine sniffing, Burberry scarves, Gucci shoes, lace underwear, English cigarettes.
He pushed at his buckled door. His thigh throbbed but wasn’t bleeding.
‘Bloody thing won’t open!’ he bellowed, enraged. The front of the Merc was rearranged, sunken. The windscreen was starred into opacity. He heaved again at the door and it gave. He thrust it open and climbed shakily into the icy night, then crossed gingerly to the limousine. ‘Come on!’ he yelled over his shoulder.
The heavy driver’s door clicked smoothly open. The man was dead. He felt the disappointment envelop him for a moment.
Then he pushed the light torso upright in the seat. Blood from the man’s head and mouth was on his hand, darkening it in the light from the nearest streetlamp. He looked up. Lubin was waving on the traffic that had slowed to gawp. Dmitri, a bloodstained handkerchief held to his forehead, groaned beside Vorontsyev.
Vorontsyev switched off the engine. Put the automatic gearbox into park as smoothly as a car salesman. Then he studied the dead man’s narrow, dark features. Arab, possibly Kazakh or Uzbek. Unshaven. The coat fitted him but didn’t seem right.
Cashmere, by the touch of it. He patted his hands around the man’s pockets, withdrawing a wallet from the breast pocket of the overcoat. Burberry scarf, he realised. That didn’t seem right, either, somehow — dirty fingernails, unwashed hair — the man didn’t belong in.the car or inside the coat…
He flicked open the wallet. Large denomination bills, in dollars, the real currency. Nothing Russian. Hundreds of dollars.
The man’s ID … He opened the folded piece of card.
‘What is it?’
‘It says he’s a fitter — a grease-monkey — on one of the rigs.
Iranian.’ He stared at the overcoat, the man’s dead, anonymous face. He searched the pockets again. An Iranian passport. The man came from somewhere he’d never heard of. An unskilled worker. Hundreds of dollars. The companies paid Iranians in roubles. He handed the wallet to Dmitri and reached across the body, keys in his hand, and unlocked the glove compartment.
A large package, closed by an elastic band. Gold rings, he saw, on the unmanicured, dirty-nailed fingers. He tore open the package.
Passports. A dozen of them. American, Swiss … Austrian, one British … He shuffled them Jike cards, the street seeming empty and quiet. Entirely at a loss.
The man’s dead face stared up at his sightlessly, but somehow mocking, despite the blood that stained it; knowing, almost smug.
He looked again at the passports. American, British, Swiss, Dutch … hundreds of dollars. A cashmere coat and gold rings.
All in the possession of a minimum-wage gasfield worker from Iran.
‘Get this car back to Forensic,’ he said quietly, straightening up, closing the door on the dead man and offering the bundle of passports to Dmitri’s uncomprehending expression. ‘I want it taken apart, gone over inch by inch …’ He turned back to the dead man, lolling against the side window. ‘Who the hell are you?’ he asked.
FIVE
Watching Ripples
The Vietnamese had telephoned twice more. Each time Lock had informed Vaughn Grainger, it had been like administering poison in dosages sufficient to make him ill without killing him or rendering him senseless. Nguyen Tran’s mood had been sharklike beneath the deceptive calm of his tone. Grainger was terrified of the man — and silent, aggressive and enraged at the merest question or offer of help.
The old man was growing more i
ll before Lock’s eyes — ill rather than drunk, despite the amount of alcohol he seemed intent on consuming. Billy’s murder was a barrier to intrusion.
What else could it be? Drunken grief explained everything … except that it didn’t. It was Tran, and the fact that Vaughn couldn’t find the courage to call the Vietnamese.
Lock stared from the panoramic windows of the huge lounge down at the glittering city. His hands were closed into fists in his pockets. Grainger’s mood and the mystery surrounding him pressed palpably against his back like a mounting, undispersed charge of static electricity. There was nothing he could do, and he wanted nothing but to leave. He didn’t even want to help, not really … because he sensed dark water, a whirlpool that would suck him down if he so much as reached out his hand to Grainger’s assistance. During the day, Grainger’s fear had communicated itself like a virus, so that even driving around Phoenix or out towards the Superstition Mountains still left everything unresolved. He wanted, more than anything, to walk away from it all. Everything had pressed close around him like the noon heat beyond the tinted windscreen and the air conditioning.
He heard Grainger move to the cocktail bar, clumsily pour himself another drink, then shuffle back to the leather chair in which he had sat hunched for most of the evening. The small noises scratched on his nerves like chalk on a blackboard. He rubbed his hand through his hair, tugging at it. He’d spoken to Faulkner in Washington that morning. The guy they’d arrested for trying to fence some of Beth’s jewellery had named two small-timers. The police lieutenant had sounded falsely optimistic.
The trail would lead no further than / didn’t know his name, he was just some guy in a bar. They’d never find who’d murdered her.
The telephone blurted, shocking Grainger into attention and then a cowering pastiche of fear. Lock watched him almost with contempt, then hurried to the extension before the housekeeper or the butler answered it.