A Morbid Habit

by Annie Hauxwell

  She was relieved when they moved off.

  Charlie drove in silence. Berlin had a lot of questions, but she wasn’t going to distract her from the tricky task of keeping the car on the road. Instead, she tried to put the icemen out of her mind and think through the best approach to extracting information from her so-called interpreter.

  She had very little to use in the way of leverage.

  If Charlie wasn’t working for Burghley, there was no point in threatening her with a bad report card. She obviously needed money, but if questioned she could say anything and Berlin would be none the wiser.

  Charlie had been very nervous when Berlin had mentioned the police at the hotel. If she were working with Utkin, this would make sense: neither would want to risk their scam being exposed by Berlin approaching other members of the Moscow politsya.

  Pressure in that direction was the most likely to yield results.

  When they got back to the apartment, she would take a softly-softly approach.

  Berlin kicked the front door shut behind them.

  ‘Hand over your bloody phone,’ she demanded.

  Charlie backed up. ‘I told you. I haven’t got a phone.’

  Berlin grabbed her and shoved her against the wall. She was about to rough up a pensioner. For a moment she was struck by how easy this could be when conscience was deadened by an overwhelming craving.

  ‘I don’t want to hurt you, Berlin,’ said Charlie.

  Berlin almost laughed, but then realised the dumpy woman was serious. She could have a weapon. Berlin thrust her forearm against Charlie’s throat and pinioned her to the cracked plaster. With her other hand she searched Charlie’s pockets.

  ‘All right, all right,’ gurgled Charlie.

  Berlin removed her forearm.

  Charlie unzipped her coat and reached inside.

  Berlin stopped her. She reached into the deep pocket herself and found the mobile.

  ‘Sit down,’ commanded Berlin.

  Charlie shuffled to the dining table and sat down, rubbing her throat. She reached for the vodka.

  Berlin moved the bottle away.

  ‘I want to know who you are,’ said Berlin. ‘If I don’t get a satisfactory answer, I’m calling the authorities and reporting you for kidnapping, fraud, extortion. Whatever fits in nicely with the Russian criminal code.’

  ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Charlie gruffly. She began to cough, clutching her chest, building to a hacking crescendo that culminated in her spitting into a square of grey cloth she dragged from her pocket.

  Berlin saw a fleck of red. Charlie wasn’t a well woman. The apartment was freezing. She thought of Bella, turning off heating she couldn’t afford and donning two tracksuits to keep warm.

  ‘Why are you so bloody difficult?’ she said. She sat down at the table, poured Charlie a vodka and pushed it towards her.

  Charlie drank it gratefully. Her wheezing subsided.

  Berlin scrolled through the phone’s log of recent calls. Only one had been made in the last twenty-four hours. She tapped the number and listened as it dialled.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that if I were you,’ murmured Charlie, clearly exhausted by her coughing fit.

  The unfamiliar burr of the Russian ringtone echoed down the line. Berlin didn’t understand the phrase that greeted her, but she understood the pause and beep that followed: voicemail. It was enough. She hung up.

  The interrogator’s cardinal rule was don’t give anything away. She had to avoid mentioning anything, or anyone, that Charlie might not already know about.

  ‘You’re not working for Burghley. You’re working for someone here,’ said Berlin. ‘A Russian.’

  Charlie pouted.

  ‘Come on, Charlie,’ said Berlin. ‘Who are you?’

  Charlie sighed. ‘For God’s sake, have a drink,’ she said. ‘You look as if you need one.’

  Berlin had expected more resistance, but she could see Charlie was spent. She took the bottle and poured herself a drink. Charlie raised her own in an ironic toast, gulped it, then sucked in air.

  ‘My name is Charlotte Svetlana Inkpin,’ she announced. ‘I am the so-called love child of Albert Inkpin and his mistress. He was the first General Secretary of the Communist Party of Great Britain. She was a Russian comrade. They met when he was running an organisation known as the Friends of the Soviet Union.’

  Berlin wanted to laugh. But one look at Charlie told her she was deadly serious. She was astounded.

  ‘I was born in London during the war,’ said Charlie. ‘My father died when I was one.’

  Berlin recovered enough to disguise her amazement. ‘That doesn’t explain anything.’

  Charlie poured them both another drink. ‘I came here as a sort of émigré,’ she hedged. ‘A refugee.’

  ‘From what?’ said Berlin.

  ‘Capitalism,’ said Charlie.

  ‘What?’ said Berlin. She considered what she did know about the woman: her class, her age, her choice of political memorabilia. ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Charlie.

  ‘You’re telling me you were a spy, like Philby or Maclean?’ said Berlin.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Charlie. ‘Not in that league. I was a very minor defector.’

  34

  Berlin gripped Charlie’s arm and steered her towards the front door. It had taken her a couple of shots of vodka to process Charlie’s confession, but now she had to act.

  ‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Charlie. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘We’re going back to see the Gerasimovs and find out what’s going on. Do they know you’re masquerading as my interpreter? Are they part of this set-up?’

  ‘Bad idea,’ grunted Charlie.

  The recalcitrant woman dug in her heels; her round shape made it difficult to manoeuvre her through the apartment’s imposing doorway, as wide as it was.

  ‘Get off!’ shouted Charlie, clinging to the architrave.

  Berlin pushed and heaved.

  A dull, repetitive thud started up somewhere in the apartment. Yorkie, no doubt disturbed by his mistress’s cries, was using his little body as a battering ram. The noise seemed to have an effect on Charlie. Her resistance evaporated.

  ‘You’ll be sorry,’ she said. She shrugged Berlin off, stalked out of the apartment and set off down the stairs.

  Berlin slammed the door behind them and followed.

  Charlie remained tight-lipped during the journey. She had flatly refused to discuss whom she was working for and denied all knowledge of the Gerasimovs, beyond their address and the purpose of Berlin’s interviews. She insisted it was none of her business.

  It was quite possible that the Gerasimovs were unaware that Charlie was not the interpreter assigned by Burghley. They were hardly likely to admit they were in on it, but their reaction would speak volumes.

  If they weren’t involved, Berlin could take it from there; she could let Del know that there was a problem and he could approach the client for new instructions.

  Exposing Charlie’s pretence, no matter what its purpose, could be a win for Berlin. The client would surely be relieved that their exercise in risk management, designed to protect them from the vagaries of the Bribery Act, hadn’t fallen at the first hurdle.

  The lift doors slid open. For a moment Berlin thought they had the wrong floor. The walls were bare. No gilt mirrors, no chandeliers, no ornate side tables. No snow leopards. She strode to the double doors of the apartment and flung them open.

  A vast white space lay before her.

  Berlin hurried from room to empty room.

  Charlie watched her. ‘A Potemkin village,’ she said. She muttered something in Russian that sounded very much like a curse.

  ‘A what?’ said Berlin.

  ‘It’s an expression,’ said Charlie. ‘Grigory Potemkin built a fake village to impress Catherine II when she visited the Crimea.’

  ‘It worked,’ said Berlin.

  ‘It’s a p
opular ploy here these days,’ said Charlie.

  Berlin sat on the floor of the naked room, her back resting against the warm radiators. In a matter of a few hours they had cleaned the place out, but they’d forgotten to switch off the heating. Her luck was holding.

  ‘You must have known,’ she said.

  Charlie turned on her. ‘I told you. I’d never seen either of them before in my life until yesterday. I was engaged to meet you, ferry you back and forth to this address and interpret. That’s all.’

  ‘Whoever hired you didn’t find you on Google,’ insisted Berlin.

  ‘This is Russia,’ said Charlie. ‘Nothing is what it seems.’ She slid down the wall to the floor, stretched out her stubby legs and lit a cigarette.

  ‘Don’t give me that,’ said Berlin. ‘You know what this is all about. Tell me or we’re going straight to the nearest police station.’

  Charlie gripped her head, as if holding it together.

  Berlin waited. If Charlie didn’t cooperate she’d call Utkin. His mobile number was in her Contacts list. At this point she had no-one else to turn to.

  Finally Charlie raised her hands in a sign of surrender. ‘Somebody asked me to do them a favour,’ she muttered. ‘I couldn’t say no.’

  ‘Why not?’ said Berlin.

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ said Charlie.

  ‘Try me,’ said Berlin.

  Charlie took a long drag on her cigarette. She squinted at Berlin through the smoke as she exhaled.

  ‘He’s my roof,’ she said.

  ‘Your what?’ said Berlin. Even when they were speaking English she couldn’t understand these people.

  ‘Everyone here has someone they can turn to, someone further up the pecking order,’ said Charlie. ‘They look after you, they keep your secrets – but then you have to deliver, as and when required.’

  ‘You mean, like a protection racket,’ said Berlin.

  Charlie shook her head. She put the tips of her pudgy fingers together and formed them into a peak. ‘Krysha,’ she said. ‘A roof.’

  ‘A stand-over man,’ said Berlin.

  Charlie sighed. ‘Oh, have it your own way,’ she said. Her hands collapsed together, clasped in a gesture of supplication. ‘There’s no point in going to the police,’ she added. ‘It would just make things worse. Believe me.’

  At this stage Berlin was inclined to think she was right. A pall of gloom had settled over Charlie, an air of resignation. Perhaps she had been kept in the dark.

  ‘If someone has got something over you, you should deal with it,’ said Berlin.

  ‘Easy for you to say,’ said Charlie. ‘Never been in a tight spot, Berlin?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Berlin.

  ‘Never had to do the wrong thing for the right reasons?’ said Charlie.

  It was a question Berlin would rather not answer. ‘So who is it?’ she said. ‘This krysha.’

  ‘Nobody you would know,’ said Charlie. She lapsed into a glum, distracted silence.

  Pressing the point was useless. Whoever the krysha was, and whatever it was that they had over Charlie, the eccentric Englishwoman was determined to keep to herself.

  Berlin owed Charlie nothing. But she hated bullyboys and understood only too well the fear of exposure. She turned and gazed out of the window at the frozen Moskva River eight storeys below. Blank red battlements with twin keeps loomed on the riverbank. Gleaming onion domes floated above striped turrets. Backcloth for a fairy tale.

  Berlin expected to see the Empress Catherine glide past on the ice, her retinue in tow.

  A Potemkin village. The illusion that sustained her own life overwhelmed her. Dread swarmed through her veins.

  ‘I have to see a doctor,’ she said.

  35

  They had been sitting for hours among the coughs, sneezes and wailing children in the airless waiting room. The weak cries of a woman who seemed to be calling for help drifted to Berlin from beyond a flimsy partition. It seemed the Russian medical system was in as much disarray as the National Health Service.

  ‘I’ve had enough of this,’ said Charlie. She got up and marched over to the harassed receptionist behind the counter, addressing her in a low, intense tone.

  The receptionist kept giving Berlin dark sideways looks, while Charlie harangued her sotto voce. Finally the receptionist shrugged. Charlie turned to Berlin.

  ‘The doctor will see you now,’ she said. ‘If you’ve got the cash.’

  Berlin followed her directions to a door at the end of a long corridor and knocked.

  The door was opened by a woman in her forties wearing a threadbare white lab coat. She pointed at a chair. Berlin sat. Her consultation was to be private. No witnesses. Charlie remained in the waiting room. The receptionist had said the doctor spoke ‘small English’.

  A quick online search after her initial encounter with Utkin had not given Berlin any reason for optimism: buprenorphine and methadone were both illegal in Russia, although the country consumed more heroin than any other in Europe.

  The peculiar Russian discipline of narkologija, which had its roots in Soviet-era political correctness, forbade substitution therapy. Abstinence was the goal that drove policy and medical practice – and addicts into early graves.

  ‘I’m in a considerable amount of pain,’ said Berlin. ‘A lot,’ she added, in case ‘considerable’ wasn’t clear.

  The doctor, who was writing in a file, didn’t look up. ‘Yes?’ she said. ‘From where?’

  Berlin removed her boot and sock, and rolled up her black thermal tights to display her scarred calf.

  ‘A torn Achilles tendon, repaired badly,’ she said.

  The doctor glanced down, then returned to her file. ‘And?’ she said.

  Berlin had encountered many abrupt medical practitioners in her time, but this one set a new standard in brusque bedside manners. She unwound her scarf and undid the buttons of her shirt to reveal the taut network of fading scars that rose up her neck and across her jaw. Those on her face were very pale now, their jagged pattern discernible only when traced from her throat.

  The doctor put down her pen and reached out to touch the dead tissue. Berlin shrank back.

  ‘How did this occur?’ asked the doctor.

  ‘It’s a long story,’ said Berlin.

  The doctor held Berlin’s gaze for a moment. ‘You have cash?’ she asked.

  Berlin nodded.

  ‘Codeine forte,’ she said. ‘The best I can do.’ She picked up her pen as the phone on her desk rang. She listened, muttered something in Russian, replaced the phone in its cradle and put down her pen. ‘I must ask you to leave,’ she said.

  Utkin watched as Berlin appeared outside the clinic and scanned the car park. Her mobile was in her hand. His vibrated. He slid down in his seat and answered.

  ‘Ah!’ he said, affecting surprise. ‘Miss Berlinskaya. So nice to hear from you.’

  ‘I know you’re out there somewhere,’ she said. She began to stride through the car park, peering into the vehicles. He noticed she had a limp. He slid lower.

  ‘For God’s sake, just name your price, Utkin,’ she said. ‘The embassy will be open tomorrow. I’ll get the documents I need to fly out and you’ll have missed your chance.’

  Utkin tucked the phone under his chin, started the motor and drove away at a normal pace, so that his departure didn’t attract any attention.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ he said. ‘Very likely. Don’t forget, negotiations are confidential. I’ll be in touch soon.’

  He hung up. He had underestimated this woman. She was tough, smart and resourceful. It was her Russian genes, no doubt.

  36

  Magnus glanced through the back window before he got out of the black cab. The car that had followed them since they left south London had pulled over and switched off its lights.

  Carmichael had left him to fend for himself in the bloody back blocks of Bermondsey. He had nearly frozen to death, until the cab came to his rescue and delivere
d him to his bijou terrace in Victoria Park.

  He had nearly lost the house in the third divorce, but luckily she had had more money than he did and the judge had taken a dim view of this spiteful attempt by some ballbreaker to wrest away an Englishman’s castle.

  Magnus got his keys out of his pocket, clambered out of the cab and hurried up the short concrete path to the front door, slamming the gate behind him. He cursed himself for not having a security light installed.

  He fumbled, trying to get his key in the lock.

  He heard the gate click open and spun around to face a man coming up the path.

  ‘What do you want?’ said Magnus. His hand was shaking so much he dropped his keys. ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  The man bent down and picked up the key ring. ‘Peter Green, sir,’ he replied. ‘I’m the babysitter.’

  In the kitchen, Magnus arranged the tea things on a tray. Good Christ, he thought, there’s a man with a gun in my living room who will only say he works for ‘the government’, and my response is to put the kettle on.

  ‘Earl Grey okay?’ he called out.

  ‘Fine, thank you,’ came the response.

  All so bloody English.

  He carried the tray in and Peter Green jumped up to give him a hand. Magnus glimpsed the gun again, a big bugger, tucked into a shoulder holster. Then again, Green himself wasn’t exactly slight.

  ‘Are you authorised to carry that thing?’ he asked.

  ‘It depends what you mean by authorised,’ replied Green. ‘Shall I be Mother?’

  Magnus nodded. He was shaking so much he didn’t trust himself to pour. They sat down and Green did the honours.

  ‘So, Peter,’ Magnus said with as much confidence as he could muster. ‘Why exactly are you here?’

  ‘To protect you, sir,’ he replied.

  ‘From whom?’ said Magnus. ‘And why does it involve confiscating my mobile and unplugging my landline and modem?’

  ‘Just sit tight for the time being,’ said Green. ‘Read a book. Watch the telly.’

  ‘I need to check my email,’ said Magnus.