A Wild Justice

by Craig Thomas

  She huddled her arms about herself, straitjacketed by the wind and snow, trudging forward with her head down. The place was a bloody Gulag!

  Cold — God, it was so bloody cold… She lurched into a wall, shocking herself upright and breathless, as if she had been attacked. Icebound metal under her gloved fingers. If she hadn’t walked in a circle, this was the largest of the vehicle sheds. The equipment store, another large, hangarlike block, was next to it. She wiped the snow out of her eyes and mouth and moved along the wall until she encountered the corner.

  A gap in the snow, momentary as it was, revealed the equipment store twenty yards away. Then it vanished like a snowy mirage. She rubbed her arms and body, hesitated, then plunged once more into the blizzard, hurrying towards what would be a welcome collision with the other building. Her hands, stretched out before her, found only cold rushing air, and a faint sense of panic began before she touched icy corrugated steel.

  She despised herself for her churning stomach and the feeling of alienation. The storm threatened her in a manner she could not explain, which could not be stilled by reason. The blizzard was like a shroud.

  She felt her way along the building until she found the corrugated main door and the control panel beside it. The building sheltered her from the worst of the wind and flying snow, so that she could hear her own ragged breathing loud with relief.

  Silly bitch, she told herself. The Norwegian assistant manager of the rig had given her a passcard and she fed it into the slot and stabbed out her temporary number. The control box hummed and she pressed the Up button. The corrugated door groaned with its weight of ice, crackling like frozen clothing as it rolled up. She pressed Stop and ducked beneath it, lowering the door behind her. It clanged in the sudden, unexpected silence of the darkened building.

  Marfa heard her own breathing, felt her breath cloud around her. She fumbled along the wall and threw the main light switch.

  Suspended striplights flickered on, greyly, dustily it seemed. Her breathing smoked in the icy air. Her body shivered with the aftershock of the blizzard, but gradually became calmer.

  The store was huge, maybe seventy metres by fifty. The ribbed, whalelike roof was all but lost above the suspended lighting.

  Half of the building was high rows of storage shelves, the remainder an open area of palleted crates and boxes. A line of forklift trucks stood against one wall like intent men in a urinal, their batteries being recharged overnight. The building was empty except for her intrusion. And baffling. What was she looking for? She should have brought the Norwegian with her. She fished inside her snow-covered clothing and pulled out a sheaf of photocopied dockets the assistant manager had supplied. She remembered the secretary, Maxim, bent over the photocopies, his dark eyes aware of her. He had been afraid of her, but there seemed no urgency to his apprehension. She couldn’t see how he was connected with Al-Jani or with Hussain. Yet both of them had worked on Rig 47, had been billeted here in the compound

  … there had to be some connection between them, surely?

  She began checking the invoices against the crates on the nearest pallets. Only luggage had come up on the flight from Tehran with Hussain — and halal meat and other Moslem food.

  Goludin would check that out. Spare tractor parts, valves, pumps, drill bits … She became absorbed, moving through the crates like a small, intent rodent, glancing occasionally at her watch. Nine-thirty, ten, ten-fifteen… The huge naves of storage shelving encompassed her. Silence, except for her footsteps, her breathing, her gradual frustration. And the wind baying outside the corrugated walls.

  Opened crates she checked more carefully. The noise of bolts rattling to the floor and rolling away was like gunshots in the cavernous store. She didn’t bother to retrieve them. Occasionally, the skittering noise of small, clawed feet. Some animal life that had wandered in off the tundra, lemmings or rats.

  She yawned. Ten-forty. She’d wasted an hour and a half, almost. If the drugs were here, she wouldn’t find them. If drugs were ever stored at the rig, they’d only stumble on any evidence by a miracle. Without a special reason for suspicion, it had been made clear to her that she wouldn’t be allowed to access the computer. It would be easier to break Maxim — who knew something for certain but which might have nothing whatever to do with Al-Jani or Hussain.

  In the silence after her yawn, the sound of footsteps, quick, hurried, furtive. She was startled fully awake. Then the noise of the wind increased and she lost their sound. Where? That way? She felt hot as she stood, completely still, between two great cliffs of shelving, crates stacked almost to the roof, their perspective stretching away to either end of the building.

  She could hear nothing but the wind, and shivered. Then hurried.

  He was darkly dressed, small, thin-framed. She saw that much. His face was hidden by a balaclava, melting snow glistening on the wool and shining in droplets on his narrow shoulders.

  Then he hit her across the temple with something and she fell back, the great columns of the shelving like the pillars of a cathedral drunkenly tilting, then lurching. His masked face appeared above her own, then he struck her again across the head as she tried to roll away from him, kick out.

  Then she felt herself, dimly and woozily, being dragged from the intersection where he had ambushed her, along the concrete floor, his hands beneath her armpits, her head filled with pain and sickeningly spinning. Then she blacked out -

  door being raised with a groaning clatter. Blank once more.

  Then the blast of the wind and the drenching of the driven snow woke her. She felt her hands seized. Blank again. Hands somewhere behind her, numb. Her coat was open, hands were pulling at her sweaters. Her terror at the prospect of rape. Then she blacked out again.

  ‘Excuse me one moment, Val,’ Vorontsyev murmured, taking the insistent mobile phone from his coat pocket. Panshin seemed amused, yet well aware of the tension between himself and Schneider; and of the latter’s nerves. ‘Vorontsyev.’

  It was Lubin, almost breathless with excitement; his habitual manner.

  ‘Sir, Rawls’ fingerprints match! He was definitely in the Merc with the Iranian at some time. They’re tied together, sir!’

  Vorontsyev retained a casual, indifferent manner, smiling at Valery Panshin and his companions as he stood a matter of yards from their table.

  ‘That sounds fine, Lubin. Good work. Just type up the report for me, will you? I’ll be in touch.’

  ‘But, sir—’ Lubin began to protest, then said: ‘You can’t talk freely, right, sir?’

  ‘Just so.’

  ‘Do you need help, sir?’

  ‘No. No problem. ‘Bye, Lubin.’ He cut the connection and returned affably to the three men around the table; Schneider, Panshin the jazz club owner and gangster, and Panshin’s chief lieutenant, the small, neat, dangerous Dom Kasyan. His nickname among the small-fry, the parasites and the runners and hustlers was Mack the Knife … which, of course, was an interesting thought. Kasyan certainly had the skills to have despatched Rawls neatly and quietly — as did perhaps two hundred other people in Novyy Urengoy. ‘Sorry about that,’ he apologised mockingly. ‘Pressure, pressure — a policeman’s lot is not a happy one, with so many suspicious characters in the immediate neighbourhood.’ He grinned.

  Kasyan scowled, but Panshin shook his head. A waitress brought Vorontsyev the imported beer he had ordered. He placed a twenty-rouble note on her tray, to which she was on the point of objecting when Panshin waved her away. Vorontsyev’s joke and custom was to pay in Russian currency. The club accepted only hard currencies or credit cards.

  He sipped his beer. The house trio had just finished ‘Stella by Starlight’ and he applauded politely, as did one or two others in the room. Schneider seemed obligated to tap his big hands together for a moment or two. The man was discomfited yet somehow reliant upon Panshin’s presence, the room; even on Kasyan.

  T didn’t know you two knew each other. You come for the jazz, Dr Schneider?’
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  ‘Just the same as you do, Alexei,’ Panshin intruded. Schneider flushed with relief. Panshin wreathed his smile in cigar smoke, his broad, open face pleasant, direct, concealing nothing.

  ‘Of course. Who’s up tonight?’

  ‘Scandinavians.’ The house trio bowed and departed the tiny stage. ‘My booking manager tells me they’re very good.’

  ‘The club’s filling up nicely, Val — people must have heard of them. But then, you pay only top rates.’

  Panshin shrugged, holding his cigar beside his jowl.

  ‘I like people to enjoy themselves, Alexei, you know that.

  Why else would I welcome the chief of detectives unless I was broadminded and public-spirited?’

  ‘Especially as I’m not on the payroll.’ He turned to Schneider at once and added: ‘And how do you come to know Panshin the gangster, Dr Schneider? I’m quite jealous that you’re also a table guest.’

  ‘I — just through the music,’ Schneider muttered. Like hell it is, my young friend, he thought.

  ‘I see. One thing I wanted to ask you, Doctor. Lucky you’re here. I forgot at the hospital.’ Panshin’s mouth flickered at the corner, just once. His eyes, creased in fat like those of a Mongolian, might have been a fraction narrower for a second. He suspected that Schneider was there to tell him what Vorontsyev had just revealed.

  ‘Oh, yes?’

  ‘Has your unit admitted any new cases in the past two days?

  I mean, people who have OD’d, or are sick on badly cut heroin

  … even into withdrawal because they’

  He was leaning forward across the table to Schneider, who could therefore not so much as glance at the two Russians.

  ‘I don’t recall any’

  ‘Even anyone begging at the door, perhaps?’ Vorontsyev smiled, his hand over Schneider’s wrist. The pulse jumped like the heartbeat of a captured bird. / can check, Vorontsyev’s touch informed the American.

  Panshin brushed a fat hand across his superbly cut grey hair and said: ‘Do you have to turn my club into an annexe of police headquarters, Alexei? Dr Schneider is here to relax!’

  ‘I thought he was dead beat and on his way home. Well, Dr Schneider — any new admissions, any sense that there are drugs on the street, suddenly?’

  The Scandinavian drummer had begun putting his kit together and was making tiny tapping noises, like some forgotten prisoner, on the snare and the hi-hat. It seemed further to unnerve Schneider, whose gaze Vorontsyev held, diminishing the presence of Panshin and his lieutenant.

  ‘I was — was suspicious of two new admissions. I didn’t run any tests, but they showed the usual reaction to new-cut heroin.

  Especially one of them, who’d been hanging on by means of methadone. You suspect that a new shipment has arrived?’

  ‘We think one might have. Your information tends to confirm it.’ The bass drum was tapping ominously. March to the scaffold, Vorontsyev thought. ‘It’s helpful, anyway,’ The bass player had arrived on the stage and thrummed quickly through scales and chords. The sound, too emphatic, was threatening. Schneider, Rawls, Panshin. It was too neat, even as he thought it. ‘Maybe I could send an officer up to interview any new admissions tomorrow?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Panshin was not into drugs. Even Dmitri, at his most obsessive and dogged, had had to surrender to lack of evidence months ago. Extortion, protection, prostitution and gambling; most of the mafioso criminal pursuits, in which he had excellent, postgraduate qualifications, but not heroin. There wasn’t a shred of evidence …

  … nor was there against Schneider, or the dead man, Rawls.

  Then there was the Iranian with the cornucopia of false passports, who was linked to Rawls in some way. Yet nothing tangible connected them, beyond acquaintance …

  … though he was certain that Schneider had come running to Panshin to inform him he’d been questioned by the police about Rawls.

  He finished his beer and smiled. The pianist was running through scales, loosening his touch.

  ‘You haven’t branched out recently, have you, Val?’ he asked meaningfully.

  A momentary glare, difficult to recognize in the dim lighting of the club, then Panshin shrugged and laughed.

  ‘Not me. Why should I, Alexei? You’d know where to come at once.’

  Vorontsyev turned to Schneider. ‘Did you bring your friend Allan Rawls to the Cafe Americain, Doctor?’

  ‘I–I m not sure. I think maybe we came once.’ He glanced at Panshin. Kasyan was becoming contemptuously impatient.

  ‘Your American friend who works for the gas company? You introduced him,’ Panshin replied. ‘I don’t think he liked the singer.’ Panshin laughed.

  ‘She was good. I must have caught her on a different night.’ He stood up. ‘Enjoy the Scandinavians, Doctor.’

  ‘You’re not staying, Alexei?’

  ‘No. I am tired. I thfnk I’ll have an early night. ‘Bye, Valyosha.’

  The diminutive signifying friendship fell between them like a card thrown down on the table. Panshin stared at him, unblinking.

  ‘Kasyan,’ he nodded. The little man twitched at the sound of his name, as if being read a charge sheet.

  He passed the bouncers and the manager hovering at the door, tramped almost blithely along the corridor and pushed his way out into blowing snow. The doorman was stamping his feet and clapping his hands for warmth.

  Vorontsyev used his lighter to warm the lock of the car door, then opened it. He dragged the mobile phone from his pocket and dialled Lubin.

  Xubin, are you busy?’

  At once: ‘No, sir. What can I do?’

  ‘I want surveillance on the Cafe Americain — from outside.

  Dr Schneider’s BMW. I just want to know when he leaves and whether he’s alone — and whether he goes home immediately.

  OK?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I’ll come right down.’

  ‘Anything from Marfa?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I’m not surprised — it was a slim chance. The action’s here.’

  ‘Is Panshin involved? I thought he didn’t do drugs.’

  ‘So we thought. I’m not sure.’

  ‘Why is Schneider there?’

  ‘Claims he likes jazz. He showed not a flicker of interest. He knows Panshin well, apparently. I think he came by to tell Panshin I’d been asking questions about Rawls.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why would Val Panshin be interested — quite.’

  ‘We could turn Panshin over’

  ‘We could never organise a raid without Panshin being tipped off. He must have a dozen people in CID on retainers of one kind or another … But-‘ He paused, then murmured: ‘We could check on Schneider’s Addiction Unit. More drugs than anything else except swabs pass through a hospital.’

  ‘The hospital, sir?’

  ‘I’m suspicious of young, idealistic doctors who know gangsters.

  It’s a personality failing of mine. Get down here as soon as you can. I’ll hang on, parked on the street.’

  He switched off the phone and started the engine, turning the car gingerly around and easing it into the alleyway. He parked on K Street beneath neon mammaries the nipples of which winked on and off, one red, one green. The outlined female form behind the giant breasts was nude and leering.

  He dialled Dmitri’s number, at once imagining the silent untidy rooms of the house, the noise of the television. Heard the set as the call was answered. Dmitri’s voice was tired but sober.

  ‘Dmitri — how’s your head?’

  ‘Alexei. OK. I’m coming in tomorrow, whatever. It’s too quiet here.’ After a moment, he added, ‘Sorry. Is there something you want?’

  ‘Panshin.’

  ‘Yes?’ Eager.

  ‘He’s friendly with Dr David Schneider, of the Addiction Unit

  — no, wait a minute. Tomorrow for that. When I spoke to Schneider, he admitted there’s a new supply on the street, possibly, so that
bastard who got blown up brought the stuff in after all. Can you get hold of your contact and check that?’ T’ll try. It shouldn’t be difficult. Where the hell did it go?’

  ‘You checked the manifest for that flight. What else was in store at the airport, just at the same time?’

  ‘Christ, Alexei, you want Mr Memory, not me!’

  ‘Get your notebook, jog your memory.’ He watched the play of neon over his hands and clothes as he waited for Dmitri to return to the phone. The impression was of disease.

  ‘The freight hangars were stuffed to the roof with the usual

  — mostly to go up to the rigs by road or transport helicopter.

  Machine parts, pipe, pumps, the whole ragbag. I didn’t bother to take special note of anything. Meat, restaurant supplies, vegetables.

  It smelt of cabbages in there, I remember. And whisky, needless to say. A crate got accidentally broken open. You wouldn’t believe it was half-empty, would you?’

  ‘I would. Anything else?’

  ‘Just the whole town’s diet and desires, crated up. What were you looking for?’

  ‘Medical supplies.’

  ‘Yes, of course there were. You think the hospital’s something to do with it? Schneider?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think we should find out, don’t you?’

  ‘I’ll get onto it. I’ll get someone down to the airport. Check what supplies, when they were collected — and see if there’s horse on the streets. Leave it with me.’

  ‘I will. ‘Night.’

  He put the phone on the seat beside him and folded his arms across his chest, attempting to warm himself as he waited for Lubin’s arrival. It was worth checking — oh, yes, it was certainly worth checking more closely on Dr Schneider.

  Her head ached, but the throbbing she anticipated seemed muffled. There was a thong of cold tight around her temples, like whatever held her arms behind her back. She had no sensation in her fingers.

  Marfa struggled with her thick, numbed senses, attempting to move, even feel, the body that seemed separated from her by a vast, blank distance. Something penetrated the numbness, near where her face, nose might be — something that stank of rotten meat, decayed vegetables … then that clarity whirled away, spinning in the darkness.