Moskva

by Jack Grimwood

  The front door was open and slightly off its hinges. The turret had an intricately carved fascia hung below cedar tiles. The fascia had slipped in two places. One bit hung down like a tongue.

  It was, even in ruins, an impressive building.

  ‘I’m surprised it hasn’t been repaired,’ Tom said.

  The minister shrugged as if he wasn’t surprised at all.

  Sweeping the binoculars along the edge of the ice, Tom saw mounds that might be camouflaged men or simply banks of snow. Except for slowly falling flakes there was no movement out there at all. Everything suggested the house was deserted. To Tom, that probably meant it wasn’t.

  ‘How will they approach this?’ he asked.

  ‘Depends,’ Svetlana said.

  Five minutes became ten. A lorry on the road below lit the sky with double headlights as it began cresting a hill. It could be seen several minutes later as a slowly receding glow. An owl hooted from an oak, and a rabbit froze in the moonlight, then bounced away. Reaching for the glasses again, Tom found tight scars in the snow marking its departure.

  ‘What’s holding them?’ Vedenin muttered.

  It was Svetlana who answered. ‘I imagine they’re waiting for the moon to go in, sir. From the position of the clouds, it won’t be long.’

  She was right. The moment the moonlight vanished, a snow-mound became a man on the move, white against white, except where his helmet showed against the dark house beyond. He began a slow and steady military crawl towards the half-open front door. He’d have made it too, if the cloud hadn’t suddenly thinned.

  Flame flashed from the turret.

  The snap of a rifle and the crawling man’s shout filling the same second.

  Welling blood stained the man’s uniform, and streaked the snow as he began to retreat. When Tom glanced over, Svetlana’s face was frozen. He passed her the glasses without being asked. She grabbed a look before pushing them at the minister.

  ‘This is not good,’ Vedenin said.

  ‘No, sir.’

  Watching the man crawl put Tom back in the stony fields of a hill farm beyond Enniskillen. There’d been no snow, just the sodden dirt from a fortnight’s rain. When the wounded Russian dragged himself half-upright and zigzagged for a tree, reaching safety, Tom sighed with relief.

  ‘Why didn’t they fire again?’ Vedenin demanded.

  Tom said, ‘Limited supply of ammunition?’

  Svetlana shrugged. ‘Possible.’

  Out on the lake, nothing moved. The mounds, some of which might simply be mounds, stayed where they were. The next shot came from a different window and a snow mound quivered and remained simply a mound. No cursing man and no blood to stain the white. A third shot came half a minute later from a window beside the turret. This time a mound rolled over and curled into a ball.

  The next shot stilled it.

  ‘Minimum force,’ Vedenin said. ‘Remind them.’

  Svetlana put down the binoculars. When Tom opened his mouth, Vedenin waved him off. ‘Yes, yes. Go …’ He sounded tired and looked tireder. An old man out late in the cold, wishing he was somewhere else.

  ‘Major,’ Svetlana hissed.

  ‘On my way,’ Tom said.

  They were halfway there, using trees for cover, when three shots rang from the turret and out on the lake someone screamed.

  ‘Don’t,’ Svetlana said. ‘Just don’t.’

  She swore at the sound of a whistle, slapping her head with her hand when a dozen mounds stood simultaneously. Movement in the gardens at the sides of the house showed other Spetsnaz were doing the same. Frantic shots cracked from the turret, and one white ghost fell, rolled once and spasmed.

  ‘Svetlana …’

  ‘They’ll take care,’ she promised.

  She didn’t believe it any more than he did.

  Tom watched helplessly as white ghosts closed on the house in a wave. A stun grenade tumbled through a broken window, its blast blowing glass from the next window along. A man ran to the lopsided door, threw in another stun grenade and followed with tear gas. A crouching ghost slapped a charge to the side of the building, twisting away as it blew and smoke billowed around him. Their response to the sniper was swift and brutal and in no way sophisticated.

  But it was effective.

  Ghost after ghost rolled in through blown-out windows or slammed through shattered doors. Three Spetsnaz stood on a balcony, white ropes hanging from grappling irons behind them. They kicked in the window and entered, AK-47s levelled. Tom heard automatic fire.

  One burst, then another.

  Smoke billowed from a dozen windows.

  All the doors were off their hinges. Shouts burst from inside as men moved from room to room reporting them clear. It was frighteningly familiar and eerily strange. These men were police, not soldiers. But they moved and reacted like a trained troop because that’s what they were. Police acting as soldiers. While the British forces in Ulster were soldiers acting as police. Tom shook his head.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ Svetlana insisted.

  ‘She’d better be,’ replied Tom, meaning it.

  ‘You want to go in?’

  ‘If the building’s clear.’

  ‘Wait here …’

  When Svetlana returned, it was with a flashlight. ‘There are no fires and the tear gas is clearing. We’re good to go.’

  ‘Anyone seen Alex?’

  ‘Not so far. Keep silent if possible.’ She shrugged. ‘They train them hard. They train them well. Let’s keep things simple.’

  ‘I’m their enemy?’

  ‘Mine too,’ she said. ‘I’m just a little bit more sophisticated about it. I don’t mind having a drink before killing you.’

  Men holding dynamo lights looked up as Svetlana brought Tom through the front door. Their facemasks hung loose and they had their goggles hooked over their helmets. They watched Tom warily. A man in leather jacket and jeans among men in uniform. A stranger with a uniformed major at his side. The air in the hall was still sharp from tear gas. He could smell cordite and smoke from the flashbangs.

  When Tom made for the stairs, Svetlana followed.

  The ruined house had been grand once, filled with servants, portraits, good china … the things revolution is supposed to sweep away. Horsehair poked from a leaking sofa behind them, paint flaked from a portrait they passed on the stairs, the landing wallpaper peeling back to bare wood.

  ‘Problem?’ Svetlana asked, when a man moved to stop them climbing the next flight of stairs.

  ‘The sniper’s up there, Comrade Major.’

  ‘Dead?’

  ‘As a rat.’

  ‘Was he alone?’ Svetlana asked.

  ‘Yes, Comrade Major.’

  ‘Good.’

  Tom followed her up a spiral so rotten it sank like turf under his heel.

  The sniper was on the floor of a little landing at the top. His rifle had been propped against the wall. It was small bore, bolt action. The kind of thing Caro’s father might buy Charlie for Christmas. One of the ghosts had torn down a curtain and tossed it over his face. A courtesy Tom hadn’t expected.

  Svetlana didn’t protest when he lifted back the cloth.

  ‘Oh Christ,’ said Tom.

  Thirteen, fourteen? Tom doubted he was older.

  He crossed himself, shut the child’s eyes from instinct and began a prayer. It was short and to the point. He doubted the dead boy had any sins that really mattered. He refused to accept that the boy should be held responsible for those of his father. He expected God to reserve vengeance for whoever was really responsible.

  The boy was dressed in a camouflage uniform better suited to the desert and outmoded enough to have come from an army surplus store. It was at least two sizes too big for him, and an extra hole had been punched through his belt to make it small enough to fit round his waist. His face was perfect, his fair hair long for Russia, his eyes blue and already dimming before Tom’s fingers smoothed his eyelids.

  A row o
f machine-gun bullets had opened his chest.

  Blood welled from wounds that looked neat enough from the front but would, Tom knew, be a matted mess from behind. The best you could say was that the child had died quickly, quite possibly in the first moment if one of the bullets had opened his heart.

  ‘Fuck this,’ Tom said. ‘Really. Fuck this.’

  ‘You recognize him?’ Svetlana asked.

  ‘Beziki’s other son.’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  Tom nodded mutely, remembering the photograph the fat man had produced at supper. How would he feel if he lost Charlie as well? How could the fat man possibly cope? Tom wanted cold anger. He wanted his numbness back. All he had was a hot flame for a heart.

  ‘Why would Beziki’s boy do this?’ he demanded.

  And Svetlana’s answer came as easily as if it was obvious.

  ‘Because he had no choice. Because he was protecting his father or someone else. Because the consequences of not doing it were worse.’

  ‘Ah,’ said a voice. ‘They said I’d find you here.’

  Vedenin’s words made Svetlana stiffen. The minister came to stand behind her. He barely glanced at the sniper. The old man’s face was drawn, his thoughts turned inwards. ‘We’ve found children.’

  ‘Children, sir?’ Svetlana said.

  ‘A dozen or so. In the cellar. Behind locked doors.’

  ‘Are they all right?’

  ‘You’d better come with me.’

  Trying not to think about what he might find, Tom followed him down the spiral staircase, past a dozen men he barely noticed. If he’d had the adrenaline rush of battle, it might have been different. If you could call killing a child holding a rabbit rifle battle. But all he felt was a growing dread as Vedenin led the way to where steps descended to vaulted cellars below.

  At the bottom, five children sprawled on a rug.

  Three boys, two girls, all young.

  They could have been sleeping, but they weren’t. In the middle stood a two-litre bottle of Coke, the real thing, not some Soviet copy. It was a quarter gone. Paper cups lay nearby. A crime-scene photographer was already shooting the corpses, his flash bleaching out their faces and throwing shadows on the wall.

  ‘Any more?’ Tom demanded.

  ‘In the next room.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Eleven so far.’

  ‘Is Alex one of them?’

  The old man looked shattered, on the verge of tears. All the bombast, all the pride in his elite troop had gone out of him. Whatever he’d been expecting, it wasn’t this. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. He gestured helplessly at the cellar beyond. ‘You tell me.’

  20

  In the Cellar

  Tom stepped unthinking over bodies, moving past the ghosts, who shuffled aside to let him through. An officer dipped to retrieve a half-empty Coke bottle and sniffed it, putting it down more or less where he found it. Only the camera flashes and photographers suggested that this was a crime scene.

  The rest of them seemed to have forgotten that.

  Five more bodies lay in the cellar beyond, one of them dark-haired and on her front with a denim jacket neatly folded under her head, as if she were sleeping. Her arms were pale, her jeans new, her plimsolls undone. The one shaken free said her death had not been as peaceful as her form made it seem.

  Kneeling, Tom reached for her.

  When he hesitated, fingers gripped his shoulder hard. He could smell Svetlana’s scent and feel the heat of her on the back of his neck. ‘Do it,’ she said.

  He rolled the girl over and saw a stranger.

  Very beautiful and very young, but a stranger. Unbroken but for the fact she was no longer alive. The police hadn’t let him see Becca. What the paramedics cut from the Mini the authorities put in a box after the autopsy, screwed down the lid and advised Tom not to look. Even now, even this many months later, he felt guilt that he hadn’t made someone show him.

  ‘Yours?’ Vedenin asked.

  Mine’s already buried, Tom almost replied.

  Taking Tom’s silence as a negative, Vedenin followed Tom towards the door to the cellars and stopped to talk to the Spetsnaz officer who had briefed him earlier.

  ‘Six boys, five girls,’ he said on his return. ‘That’s the lot.’

  ‘Eleven in total,’ said Svetlana.

  ‘Twelve,’ Tom corrected her. ‘With Beziki’s boy upstairs.’

  Comrade Vedenin stared at him. ‘That’s Gabashville’s son?’ His face, already pale, was unreadable as he reached into his pocket for a cigar, lighting it mechanically, his first puff a stronger imitation of their warm breath in the frozen air.

  ‘Yes, sir, I think so.’

  Vedenin peeled a strip of tobacco leaf from his lip and flicked it on to the crime scene floor. He looked round the room and when he turned back his face was hollow, almost haunted. Dropping his cigar, barely smoked, he ground it under his heel without really noticing, his movements mechanical.

  ‘At least your girl isn’t here. I suppose that’s something.’

  ‘I pity her mother,’ Svetlana said.

  Both men turned to stare at her.

  ‘If Alex were here and dead, at least she’d know where her daughter was. As it is, she still won’t know and we’re no closer to finding her.’ She shrugged at Vedenin’s look. ‘A hard truth is better than no truth. You ask her mother.’

  ‘Svetlana …’

  ‘I’ll wait outside,’ she told him.

  ‘Her childhood was complicated,’ Vedenin told Tom, lighting another cigar. ‘Sometimes the ones with complicated backgrounds make the best officers.’ He looked Tom up and down, as if seeking proof of this. ‘I’m told yours was similarly messy?’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘People,’ he said heavily.

  The way Vedenin kept staring round the cellar made Tom wonder whether he simply couldn’t believe what he was seeing or hoped somehow that if he looked hard enough he might change it. Several times the minister opened his mouth to say something before changing his mind. Finally, he stubbed his cigar out on the wall, barely a quarter smoked and in total disregard of the need not to corrupt evidence.

  For a second, his hand hovered over the pocket where he kept his cigar case and then he shrugged. ‘We should go,’ he said.

  ‘What happens now?’ Tom asked.

  ‘Svetlana will drive you back to Moscow.’

  ‘I mean here, sir. What happens here?’

  ‘I imagine the case will go to the local militsiya. I can see no evidence of a cult. Can you? Simply local delinquents squatting in a ruined house and poisoning themselves with homemade alcohol. It happens daily. I shouldn’t say that to a foreigner but you must have heard rumours. They’ll try to match the dead to files on missing children. Well, someone will. I doubt they’ll find much.’

  ‘And Gabashville’s child?’

  ‘If this is him, then he obviously fell in with a bad crowd. Given his upbringing that’s hardly surprising. The cult of individuality. First they want rock music, then …’ The old man looked around him. ‘You get this.’

  A howl of sirens from the road prevented Tom from answering.

  A few minutes later, panting paramedics hurtled in, too late to do anything but kneel by each body to confirm death and decide in which order to load the stretchers. A crumpled-looking man in a cheap suit came in after them, glowering at the sight of the Spetsnaz.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me …’ Vedenin said to Tom.

  He wandered over and within seconds the crumpled man was nodding seriously, and nodding some more to confirm that he was paying attention and agreed with everything the minister said. It was a surprisingly effective display of power on Vedenin’s part. Vedenin clapped the man on the back one last time, nodded curtly to the Spetsnaz officer and headed for the door, glancing over his shoulder to say Tom should follow.

  Outside, the first stretchers were being carried down the track.

  Three ambu
lances were parked behind two VV trucks, the only ones left. Despite a paramedic’s shout, Tom clambered into the first ambulance and began pulling back a sheet. A growled order from Svetlana stopped the paramedic from trying to drag him out of there. She watched Tom go from stretcher to stretcher with something close to pity in her eyes. By the time he’d checked the last of them, a tight knot of fury had taken root. He’d known Alex wasn’t there.

  The pain in his chest made him look anyway.

  ‘Where’s Vedenin?’ he demanded.

  ‘The minister’s gone home.’

  In what? Tom wanted to ask.

  A forlorn man in a crumpled suit by the side of the road gave him his answer. Vedenin had taken the pathologist’s car.

  ‘We should leave,’ Svetlana said, heading for the Zil.

  To Tom’s puzzlement, she opened the heavy rear door for him and he clambered in, feeling the cold leather like ice through his jeans. The huge car coughed into life and the paramedics and Spetsnaz stood back to let them edge out of the lay-by on to the empty road beyond. ‘Better,’ Svetlana said.

  A mile later, she pulled off the road, hard ruts frozen to the sharpness of stone juddering under her wheels. She killed the lights, leaving the stars needle sharp now that the clouds had passed. Leprous moonlight lit the hills to one side.

  Tom reached for his door handle, wondering if she’d already drawn her sidearm. When she didn’t turn, he clambered out, slamming the door with a thud so loud it dislodged snow from a fir behind him.

  Now was when she should drive away.

  Then reverse fast and hard.

  He’d seen a man killed that way.

  That had to be what this was about. Vedenin leaving so he didn’t have to be around when the rubbish was tidied. I’m shivering, Tom realized. Alcohol, or the lack of it. Cold perhaps. God knows, it was cold enough. He refused to accept that it might be fear. The car didn’t move and Svetlana remained where she was.

  Eventually, Tom realized that he was meant to take his place up front.

  Shaking imaginary drops from the cock still safely in his jeans, as if he’d been pissing a bucketful against the Zil’s back wheels, he slid himself on to its front seat. His heart racing, his nerves shot. One hand was shaking so fiercely it wouldn’t go in his pocket. His certainty that she’d been about to kill him seemed suddenly pitiful.