Moskva

by Jack Grimwood

  ‘Fuck Gabashville.’

  ‘Dennisov, what’s going on?’

  ‘She told me. She told me how you took advantage of her.’ He glanced at the concrete wall behind Tom and the steps down to the street. That was where Tom had come in, watching Dennisov throw someone down those steps.

  ‘Sveta says I took advantage of her?’

  The Russian glared. ‘She doesn’t have to.’

  ‘It was once, for God’s sake.’

  ‘So you admit it?’

  ‘Dennisov.’

  ‘You told me nothing happened. I asked you.’

  ‘You asked what was between us. I said nothing. It was once. Someone had just tried to kill me. I was …’ Tom didn’t have to say more. The sour twist of Dennisov’s mouth said he understood. Sex could be complicated or simple. Sometimes it wasn’t about sex at all. Sometimes it was about convincing yourself you were alive.

  ‘Once?’ Dennisov said.

  ‘She was being kind.’

  ‘You took advantage of her.’

  ‘Dennisov. She was being kind.’

  He looked at Tom, then glanced through to where Sveta was lost in her game, manipulating blocks at impossible speed, oblivious to the crowd pushing in on her, or the lover and ex-fuck at the door edging back from a fight. Would she mind if they fought over her, Tom wondered. Would she be pleased? Appalled? He imagined all she’d display would be contempt.

  ‘Anyway,’ Tom said, ‘she didn’t know you then.’

  Dennisov’s face cleared and Tom cursed himself for not coming up with that sooner. ‘You’re right,’ Dennisov said. ‘She didn’t know me then. When I saw her … with that rifle and a rabbit hanging from her hand … The light was on her hair. And the trees were dark and sharp behind her. You’ve seen that poster in my room. I felt …’

  A coup de foudre.

  Tom could honestly say he’d never had one, had never felt his entire happiness depended on someone returning a smile. Not even in his teens, when that kind of insanity was just about acceptable.

  ‘You like her?’

  Dennisov smiled. ‘It’s been a long time.’

  Not sex, Tom doubted it had been a long time for that. There were a lot of prostitutes in Moscow for a place where official statistics proved the selling of sex had been abolished. Perhaps Dennisov meant it had been a long time since he’d been with a woman he loved.

  If Dennisov wanted to think of Sveta as a simple country girl of the forest, content to bring back food for her grandfather, then let him. Tom was fine with that. He hoped they would be happy. He suspected that they both deserved some happiness.

  ‘Dennisov, what’s the penalty for killing a political officer?’

  The Russian’s eyes went flat. ‘I didn’t,’ he said.

  ‘I know. You killed your CO. Sveta told me. Before the two of you met. All right? Before the two of you met. Now, what would it be?’

  ‘How long ago?’

  ‘Berlin.’

  Dennisov froze. He looked at Tom from under lashes far too long for a man’s and if he’d seemed drunk or nearly drunk the moment before, he was sober now, the alcohol burned from his veins by whatever darkness was in his heart.

  ‘You have the photographs?’

  ‘How do you know about them?’

  ‘I found my father’s set as a child. As you can see …’ He lifted his scarred hand, the one Tom thought had been damaged in a helicopter crash. ‘We burned them together. He had me hold each one over an open fire until it caught.’

  ‘How old were you?’

  ‘Six.’ Dennisov looked away so Tom couldn’t see his eyes.

  Tom followed Dennisov to the walkway’s edge and they stood side by side, passing a papirosa between them while Tom looked for his shadow, half intending to offer the man a drink, but his usual doorway was empty, and the couple who stumbled down the street a minute later and fell into the doorway, their hands already reaching into each other’s clothes, were too preoccupied to notice those watching from above.

  ‘We should go in,’ Dennisov said.

  Tom agreed.

  ‘Oh, so he’s talking to you now …’

  Yelena nodded to Tom and scowled at her brother, making it clear that he wasn’t included in her politeness. Having dumped a bowl of soup in front of Tom unasked, she produced a large chunk of dark bread and a cold can of East German beer, only reluctantly relinquishing vodka duties to her brother.

  ‘I should probably ask what you did for her,’ Dennisov said, once Yelena had retreated to her kitchen. ‘But I’m not sure I want to know.’

  ‘She’s a good kid.’

  ‘That’s not the general view.’

  ‘This stuff with your father …’

  ‘He always treated my sister entirely properly.’

  Tom waited as his friend vanished inside himself for a moment. When he reappeared, it was to say, ‘His friends weren’t always that careful.’

  Behind them, the bar erupted into cheers and Dennisov looked relieved at the distraction. Sveta had beaten her best, which was Moscow’s best. She’d gone from stranger to regular in an impressively short time; her uniform and gender no longer a hindrance. When she spotted the two men behind the bar – Tom still in one piece, Dennisov missing no more bits than usual – she looked relieved. It lasted less than a second and her face was impassive again by the time she joined Tom.

  ‘He made the leg himself,’ she said.

  ‘From the leaf spring of a jeep?’

  Her look said she considered Tom to be simple.

  ‘What then?’

  ‘From the landing gear of his helicopter, obviously.’

  Tom thought of the organization needed to ship a pointless strip of twisted metal from Afghanistan to Moscow just so that some crippled, barely sane ex-pilot could machine it into something useful. He could see Dennisov’s friends doing it. ‘I’m impressed.’

  ‘You should be … First Vladimir Vedenin, now Erekle Gabashville. My grandfather wants to know if he should be worried.’

  ‘I didn’t kill Beziki.’

  ‘That’s what you said about Vladimir.’

  ‘When are you going to talk to your grandfather next?’

  Sveta’s face closed down as she waited to see what Tom wanted. What he wanted was any information the commissar might have on Kyukov.

  ‘He’s in prison,’ Sveta said.

  ‘You know who he is?’

  ‘I’ve heard the name.’

  ‘Everything okay?’ asked Dennisov, reappearing from behind the bar. He had a flask of vodka in one hand and two shot glasses in the other. Unusually, the flask looked full and both glasses were empty.

  ‘All good,’ Sveta said. ‘We were talking about your leg.’

  ‘She likes it,’ Dennisov said. He sounded slightly disbelieving. Smiling at Sveta, he said, ‘We’re going through to the back.’

  ‘Want me to join you?’ she asked.

  ‘Best not,’ he said.

  He blushed slightly when she stared at him.

  ‘Trust me on this,’ he begged.

  Unexpectedly, she smiled in turn. ‘On everything.’

  He flushed bright red. He blushed so fiercely he looked like a twelve-year-old ready to pull her pigtails. Then he swivelled, pushed past his sister, cast a glance back at Sveta and vanished through the curtains, leaving Tom to follow.

  Yelena rolled her eyes.

  In the kitchen, Dennisov was already pouring Tom a vodka. He looked put out when Tom asked for coffee instead, and only slightly happier when Tom pulled what was left of his Colombian from the pocket of his Belstaff and began making coffee with that.

  When Dennisov tried to clear a space at the little fold-up table, only just avoiding tipping plates to the floor, Tom stopped him. ‘Let me,’ he said.

  By the time Tom had filled the sink, Dennisov had the file open and was flicking in disbelief through one of the account books. ‘You know what this is?’

  ‘I’ve a pretty good
idea.’

  ‘You stole these?’

  ‘Beziki gave them to me.’

  The chair creaked as Dennisov sat back, his hand reaching for his glass. With it halfway to his mouth, he changed his mind and put it down. A moment later he asked if there was enough coffee in the saucepan for two. ‘Shit,’ he said.

  Several minutes later he said it again.

  By then he’d skimmed the account books, totted up half a dozen columns using a calculator the size of a brick, checked something in an atlas he scooped from under his bed and sat in silence for several seconds, looking longingly at his vodka.

  ‘Yelena!’ His shout was so loud it made Tom jump.

  His sister came through scowling, stopped when she saw her brother’s face and put her hand on his shoulder, a gesture somewhere between a question and reassurance.

  ‘All good in the bar?’

  ‘Food’s done. Everyone has a drink.’

  ‘Sveta all right?’

  ‘She’s playing her machine. You want me to fetch her?’

  ‘No,’ Dennisov said. ‘Maybe best not. Not yet. You look at these and I’ll make more coffee.’

  ‘I can do that.’

  ‘I’d rather you read these.’

  So Yelena did, her eyes flicking from column to column as she skimmed the pages, occasionally turning back to double-check a figure. Only once did she reach for the calculator, and then, like her brother with his vodka, her hand stilled halfway and she did the sum in her head. Finally, she flicked to the last page of the last account book to check the date. It was two days earlier.

  ‘What are you going to do with these?’ she asked Tom.

  ‘Give them to your brother.’

  Dennisov choked on hot coffee.

  ‘You can’t,’ Yelena said. ‘I mean …’

  ‘I’m not Russian,’ Tom told her. ‘I don’t have the contacts. I can’t make the deals. I can’t make the old contracts stick. I can’t bring the old lieutenants to heel. You need muscle for something like that.’

  ‘I have friends,’ Dennisov said.

  ‘I’m sure you do. All those men coming back from Afghanistan looking for something more than they had when they left. All with new skills and weapons training. All used to obeying orders.’

  Yelena looked thoughtful.

  ‘As for things like the farm,’ Tom said, ‘I’m not even sure Russians can pass property on to foreigners.’

  ‘They can’t,’ she said.

  ‘There you go. It has to be your brother. I’ve taken one of the bank books and left you the rest. And I might be able to access the West Berlin one for you.’

  ‘I should turn you in,’ said Dennisov. ‘You’ve just offered to help with money laundering. You’ve confessed to being there when Beziki died. You’ve …’ He shrugged. ‘Proof of criminal conspiracy. Illegal accounts. Extortion. Corruption. You’re trying to compromise an ex-officer. This is probably a Western plot.’

  ‘You know where the telephone is.’

  ‘There will be money,’ he said. ‘For you. Regularly. There will be money. We can work something out later. What can I do for you now?’

  Answer a question, Tom thought. But he wasn’t sure if he should ask it. And if he did, who they might tell.

  ‘Give me a vodka,’ he said instead, wondering how long it would take Sveta to get him his other answer and how badly he was going to dislike it when it arrived. ‘And then I need to get home.’

  ‘You mean the flat?’ Yelena asked.

  Yes, he supposed he did.

  43

  Yelena’s Offer

  Sveta turned up next morning in full uniform, her blouse ironed, creases sharp on her trousers, her boots so highly polished they looked made from patent leather. She carried her cap, with its wide red band, double strands of gold braid and oppressively large badge, under her arm. Since the last time Tom had seen her she’d been wearing a fur ushanka, dyed blue and with a badge half that size, he wondered what point she was making. ‘Official business,’ she said.

  Tom looked at her.

  ‘That’s what I told the KGB man on the gate. He knew I was coming anyway. My grandfather may have telephoned ahead.’ Pushing past Tom, she glanced round his flat and maybe he imagined that her gaze stopped for a moment on the bed. Memories of her first night with Dennisov, perhaps. When he’d got back, the entire flat had been so sterile it might have been a steam-cleaned crime scene.

  ‘Coffee?’ Tom asked.

  ‘English?’

  ‘Colombian …’

  She was still frowning when he vanished into the kitchen, and by the time he returned, she’d picked up everything on the floor, arranged the books on the windowsill alphabetically and by size, collected together dirty cups, saucers and plates, and was sitting at the table cutting a dead branch from the cactus using a silver penknife she folded away and returned to her pocket when he appeared in the doorway.

  ‘How can you live like this?’

  ‘Looks tidy to me,’ Tom said.

  The envelope with the Berlin photographs and the papers from Caro’s father was the only thing untouched, still safe under its overflowing and untidied ashtray. Tom wondered whether he should find that suspicious.

  ‘Soviet coffee is better,’ Sveta said.

  ‘As Dennisov would say … You have coffee?’

  Standing up, she walked over to the Sony cassette recorder, flipped out the blank tape, looked at it and returned it to the slot, pressing play and turning the volume up when the familiar guitar intro of Alex’s tape filled the room.

  ‘Dennisov has this,’ Sveta said.

  ‘It’s mine. Well, Alex’s. I borrowed it back.’

  Something occurred to him. Heading for the windowsill, Tom found the coloured-in cassette box with its For Alex on the back.

  ‘Recognize the writing?’

  ‘No,’ Sveta said.

  Her response was too instinctive, too fast.

  ‘It’s not yours,’ Tom said. ‘Not Dennisov’s either.’

  ‘You’ve checked?’

  ‘In passing,’ Tom said, watching her remember being asked to write out an address in English. She seemed almost impressed.

  ‘My grandfather told me to tell you to be careful. There are questions that shouldn’t be asked. And questions that should. A problem arises when those questions are the same …’ Leaning down for a leather satchel that looked older than she was, Sveta unbuckled its flap and dug around inside. She half pushed the file across the table with a scowl. ‘This is breaking the law.’

  ‘That worries you?’ Tom asked.

  ‘What’s the point of having laws if people don’t keep them?’

  Looking at Sveta, Tom realized she meant it.

  ‘Kyukov was arrested in 1953 when Beria fell, and General Golubtsov, Kyukov’s old patron, was forced to retire … Crimes against the state. He was a colonel by then. Kyukov couldn’t prove my grandfather was behind the arrest but …’ Sveta considered the matter carefully, her head tipped to one side, her eyes looking up and away, as if seeking guidance. ‘I was going to say he suspected … but he knew, I think.’

  ‘Where was he sent?’

  ‘Stalingrad first, for old times’ sake. Then a work camp on the Irtysh. Finally the gulag, beyond Lake Baikal but further north, between Yakutsk and Tiksi, according to the files.’

  ‘Why so many moves?’

  She turned the file so that it was the right way up for Tom and opened it at the first page. It was a bad week for nasty photographs. This one didn’t show a boy tied to a chair. The victim was older, gang-tattooed and naked. One eye had been cut out, the other stared glassily at the ceiling. His guts were piled neatly on his chest like a circle of sausages. ‘Kyukov’s first day,’ Sveta said.

  ‘New camp. The old boss?’

  She nodded.

  Reaching for the file, Tom opened it from the back, sparing himself the other photographs and finding instead pages of harrowed notes from those least likely to be ha
rrowed: prison officers, prison doctors, commanders of the local militsiya or the KGB. One camp commander asked simply for permission to kill the man.

  This was refused, with a reminder that Khrushchev himself had ordered Kyukov to be kept alive. The NKVD general to whom this request had been sent was surprised that the camp commander would even suggest such a thing. The commander tried again after Khrushchev’s death. When he was refused again, he asked that Kyukov be sent elsewhere.

  This was granted.

  Brief and brutal autopsy notes on Kyukov’s victims told of flesh hacked from bones, informers found blinded, tongueless or both. Of a younger rival found flayed, whose skin never reappeared.

  A younger rival found flayed, whose skin never reappeared.

  A dead cat was hardly in the same league. But all the same, Tom thought of Black Sammy, strung from his back legs over the sink. And that memory brought others: that discarded copy of Pravda the night he first went into Dennisov’s bar; a month-old issue of Krokodil left on a table in the canteen the day he went to find Davie, back when he thought this was all going to be a hell of a lot simpler and Davie was going to turn out to be Alex’s boyfriend.

  Both Krokodil and Pravda had mentioned flayings. A teenager found mutilated outside a river settlement in Siberia. Another discovered days later somewhere along the same river. Complaints about police inefficiency from the Russian version of Private Eye, counterbalanced by Pravda’s promises of imminent arrest.

  ‘He’s escaped?’ Tom said.

  He saw the shock on Sveta’s face.

  ‘It’s either that,’ said Tom, ‘or he’s been released.’

  ‘Who told you?’ she demanded. ‘Even my grandfather’s only just discovered that. How could you possibly know?’

  Tom explained about the articles.

  ‘He’ll be working his way towards Moscow.’

  ‘He’s here already. Or he’s been and gone.’ Tom told her about the dead cat, about dismembering its body and disposing of the pieces, pretending to himself and to whoever did it that it had never happened.

  ‘He won’t have liked that,’ Sveta said.

  ‘Believe me, I didn’t like it either.’

  Tom asked himself whether Kyukov had been behind the murder of the girl in the park and dismissed the thought. That murder had been too clean, too sterile. It wouldn’t have satisfied Kyukov at all.