by G. D. Abson
‘So, what do I do?’
‘You get Mikhail to give it to you.’
Primakov, as usual, was too smart, but it annoyed her that he hadn’t spared her feelings by going along with the subterfuge. ‘Well, if it’s impossible—’
‘I didn’t say that, Captain. Your…friend needs to think like a cybercriminal. Give me half an hour and I’ll send you an email. Make sure you disable the spyware option on your… I mean her antivirus software if she has one on the computer. Tell her to run the program in the email and follow the instructions. Make sure she deletes everything afterwards and empties the trash folder.’
‘It’s not for me, Leo.’
‘Of course.’ She could almost hear the bastard smile.
‘What are you sending?’
‘A keylogger. It will sit invisibly on your…friend’s machine and copy everything her husband types.’
‘Thanks, Leo.’
The afternoon had gone in a blur. Instead of taking the Metro she decided to clear her head with a walk and somehow ended up at the Peter and Paul Fortress. The temperature was barely warm enough for shorts yet middle-aged men and women, their bodies a luminous white or else the colour of oiled cedar, lay like basking seals on the banks of the Neva. She followed the road entrance and passed two young women with a gold ‘K’ on their shoulders. They wore white blouses, both had blonde hair halfway down their backs and tottered on platform heels at least ten centimetres high. She had been one of those girls once: a police cadet who appeared to exist solely as bait for the instructors or, according to the boys in her class, to fulfil an equal opportunities quota.
In hindsight, joining the police had been an effect with more than one cause: an act of supreme rebellion against her mother who had impressed on her the need to find an office job, get married, and have a baby at the earliest opportunity. Enrolling as a police cadet after university had seemed the most efficient way to deal with the issue of finding a job, while postponing marriage and motherhood for as long as she could. Blaming the dead was never satisfying though, they never argue back.
She walked around the fortress, stopping at the old jail where many of the country’s historical figures had been incarcerated, including Alexei, Peter the Great’s own son whom he’d had tortured to death. After a while, she crossed Troitsky Bridge thinking of Anatoly Lagunov. In the airport, he’d displayed stunning ignorance when she asked him about the orphanage. He’d also been unable to recall Zena’s birth name, when the adoption had taken place, or even what the orphanage had looked like. It did make sense if he was covering for Dahl. At a time when Russia was falling apart, adoptions were often informal or beset by bribery. If Zena’s had been one of them, Dahl was laid open to blackmail or criminal charges.
At the midpoint of the bridge, she paused and stared over the Neva. Another thing Lagunov would struggle to explain was his presence outside Zena’s apartment on the Friday morning, a full twenty-four hours before Yulia Federova reported her friend missing – assuming it was him that Lyudmila Kuznetsova had seen. It didn’t mean Anatoly Lagunov was complicit in the abduction of his boss’s daughter – not necessarily. An even more likely possibility was the kidnapper had already made contact with Dahl, and Lagunov had merely been summoned to check Zena’s apartment to see if she really had been abducted. She had seen it before: parents colluded with kidnappers and withheld information from the police, sometimes telling outright lies in a dubious attempt to protect the missing child. It made the job twice as difficult. On Monday, she’d insist Anatoly Lagunov and Yulia Federova come to headquarters for a formal interview. Until she was convinced that Lagunov wasn’t involved, she would instruct Thorsten Dahl to keep him out of any ransom negotiations. She knew she needed to make that phone call urgently, but it required treading carefully and her head was too full of last night’s vodka to find the right words.
Back at home, she made herself a coffee using instant granules before switching on the computer in the study. The email from Leo Primakov was already waiting for her; it had no title or contents except for a single executable file. She was relieved to note that their antivirus software was a free download Mikhail had obtained from the internet and it had no Spyware option unless, it suggested, she pay fourteen hundred roubles to upgrade it to the Elite version.
The front door creaked as it opened and her hand flashed to the mouse to minimise the window on the screen. There was silence, then the sound of shoes being kicked off. Her hand hovered over the ‘off’ switch.
‘Hello?’ she called out.
There was a girl’s voice; lively and giggling, then a hiss of “Shh!”
The door to the study opened. ‘Natasha? You’re home.’
She noticed Anton’s glistening eyes and red lips; he rocked on his heels with his hands behind his back. A smile creased the corners of his mouth.
‘Anton, have you been drinking?’ Her eyes flashed to the clock on the computer. ‘It’s not even six.’
‘Sorry, I—’
A younger, moon-face appeared and a bare arm grasped the door frame for support. ‘You must be Tanya.’
‘Hello, Mrs Ivanova.’ The girl grinned.
‘You can call me Natalya, I’m not his mother.’
‘Please don’t send her home, Natasha, it’s my fault.’ Anton tapped his chest and nearly lost his balance.
‘Just drink lots of water and make sure you’re quiet when your father gets back.’ She spoke to Tanya and the girl blushed, ‘And come over for dinner. Don’t worry about last time. Just let me know,’ she smiled, ‘and don’t listen to Anton if he tells you I’m an awful cook – he’s lying.’
The two teenagers left and she heard Anton’s bedroom door close. She hoped they were being sensible but girls were rarely on the pill, and boys with condoms were regarded with suspicion as if they had a sexually transmitted disease. Despite improvements in the last few decades, abortions were still one of the main methods of birth control. She would speak with Anton when he was alone, Mikhail couldn’t be relied on: the first time they tried to have sex, she had insisted on him using a prophylactic and it had ended in an argument when he questioned her on her sexual health.
Now she was alone, she heaved a sigh and felt her chest shake. The questions ran through her mind. What could she do if Mikhail was corrupt? Was the offence serious enough to leave him for? In her mind an affair deserved an automatic disqualification but money in a secret account? Numbers stored electronically didn’t carry the weight of a lipstick smear or a hotel receipt. What the hell was she supposed to do with it? And what of Anton, the boy-not-yet-a-man? If she left Mikhail could they still have a relationship?
She took a deep breath and returned to the computer, re-opened Primakov’s email then clicked on the attachment. The computer asked for permission to install the software he had sent. She tapped “OK”, then again to run it. A box appeared requesting a new password. She typed in “Heidelberg” remembering it as the last place she had seen her own parents truly happy. She confirmed the password then closed the box, The keylogger flashed a message to confirm it was now running invisibly in the background. A pang of guilt came from nowhere. Why didn’t she just ask Mikhail about it? She was accusing him of being secretive and yet was doing exactly the same thing herself.
Her phone started buzzing. She deleted Primakov’s email, then emptied her virtual waste bin to remove all trace of it. She glanced at her iPhone and tapped the green circle to take the call. Instantly there was the urgent wail of a police siren.
‘Mikhail?’
‘Just a minute, Angel…Hey, get out of the way, shit-for-brains!’
She heard him let loose more obscenities. As a senior officer, he was entitled to use a blue light on his own car but it didn’t always help when many of the ancient streets were narrow and there were traffic lights and crossings at every intersection.
The siren stopped. ‘Drop everything,’ he shouted. ‘Get to the Maritime Victory Park on Krestovsky Island.’
‘What is it?’
‘I said “Get out the fucking way!”’
She was deafened by the simultaneous blast of a car horn and the wail of the siren through the phone’s earpiece; they stopped abruptly.
‘There’s a body.’
She sat up straight. ‘Zena?’
The siren started again and she heard him fumble with his phone. ‘No idea. I’ll see you there.’
She ran down the stairs, taking several steps at a time. At the entrance hall, she burst through the block door and ran to her Volvo. She stopped. To get there quickly she needed a car with emergency lights but that meant going back to headquarters. Then, it was painfully time consuming to wait in line to be breathalysed. Instead, she could travel to Krestovsky Island in her Volvo, or get there even quicker if she took the Metro.
The gun tapped against her hip as she ran towards the entrance of Admiralteyskaya station, pausing to swipe her Podorozhnik card on the barrier. Feeling the warm air envelop her, she descended on a ribbon of steel into the city’s underground station; one of many built deeper than normal so Piter’s population could survive a nuclear attack. She switched to the left of the escalator and started jogging down it. After a hundred metres, a young family of four, each with a suitcase proportional to their size, blocked her way and she observed a booth at the bottom where a guard, stupefied by boredom, was monitoring the CCTV cameras fixed to the sloping ceiling. She heard a commotion and turned to see a group of four OMON in their grey-blue uniforms pushing their way down and coming to a halt a few steps above her. At the bottom, she passed the woman in the booth then took another escalator, this time shorter, and she came out in a wide, marble corridor with arches on both sides and a nautical-themed mural at the end.
The family were slow to get off and the travellers disgorged around them; a stream circumventing a rock. A uniformed sleeve went to brush her aside, and she quickly identified the owner as a major in the National Guard. It was a new army of four hundred thousand with the authority to shoot into crowds in the event that people stopped believing the propaganda on TV and decided to get rid of the president. The man would be a pauper or a millionaire, depending on his honesty, and the stony face and neat brown hair gave nothing away.
The train was already at the platform and she rushed for the doors, feeling a momentary panic for not checking which direction she was heading. A sign on the train told her she was on the Frunzensko-Primorskaya line, but that was hardly a surprise when it was the only one serving the station. She saw a diagram, a line dotted with locations, and after the first stop she knew it was heading for Krestovsky Island.
Chapter 15
Outside the Metro station, she was momentarily blinded by the bright sun. A distant siren cut through the sounds of traffic and tourists and made her wonder if it was Mikhail. She jogged down the steps and crossed the road where two empty police cars were parked on the pavement at the open gates of the Maritime Victory Park. She skirted between them and then resumed her running pace, soon drawing alongside Divo Ostrov, the Miracle Island amusement park. A child’s electric car darted in front of her, nearly tripping her up; inside its single seat was a capuchin monkey clinging to the doors, its teeth bared and eyes wide in terror. The animal’s owner twisted the tiny steering wheel on the miniature BMW’s remote control, and the monkey shrieked as it sped towards a group of teenage girls. Natalya jogged on and heard screams as a crude rocket ship arced above her, supporting wires fixed to a massive metal arm like a spinning crane. There were more screams and she glanced up to see a couple being catapulted fifty metres in the air by a human slingshot.
Ahead, the myriad of lanes and groves of exotic tree species revealed no clue to the crime scene. There were happily oblivious tourists everywhere, thousands of them.
‘Damn it,’ she cursed out loud. The park was at least two square kilometres and Mikhail had given her little in the way of directions; it was going to take forever to search on foot. She pulled out her mobile to call him then stopped herself, wondering if he was expecting it. Vasiliev had given her the case yet Mikhail was always hovering in the background, ready to help out. She knew Misha cared and was looking out for her, ready to catch her if she fell; that made her oversensitive, paranoid even, that the other menti, like Rogov, didn’t take her seriously because she was married to a senior officer.
Her breathing became ragged. She slowed, following the path as it joined the central fountain, bordered by beds of marigolds and benches where the park cleaners sat in their blue plastic boots and waterproofs sharing a flask of something steaming. They were relaxed, their demeanour suggesting they were unaware a dead body had been found nearby.
She doubled over, placing her palms flat on her thighs to catch her breath. A uniformed policeman was observing her from ten metres away. She beckoned him with her arm and watched as he pinched out a cigarette then discreetly pocketed it. The armpits of his light blue shirt were stained dark with sweat and she was aware of the dampness on her own blouse. She held up her hand while she got her breathing under control, then reached inside her purse.
‘I’m looking for—’
‘The body?’ he said, scrutinising her ID. ‘Follow the central path for a hundred and fifty metres and look for a Cosmonaut.’
She held a hand over her eyes to block out the bright sun. ‘Thanks.’
In less than a minute she came across a bulky OMON officer in the standard camouflage blue. Because of the distinctive round helmets and padded gear they wore when attending demonstrations, the OMON Special Purpose Police were known as “Cosmonauts” – it made them sound benign, but many of them had performed counter-terrorist assignments in the Caucasus, leaving behind nothing but graves and grieving mothers.
He checked her card. ‘You can go,’ he said, despite the fact she was several ranks above him.
She followed a gravel path for fifteen metres until she reached a treeline where a uniformed corporal was laying out police tape. She watched him for a moment as he tied it to a Maritime Victory Park sign that said “Entry for Authorised Persons Only.” There was a haze in the air that smelled pleasantly of sweet wood smoke and barbecue.
She held out the card again. ‘Where are you from?’
He looked up and adjusted the peak of his cap. ‘Petrogradsky District.’
‘Where’s the body?’
‘You’ve got an interest?’
‘Missing person.’
He held the tape up for her. ‘Keep going, and good luck. You won’t see much.’
She ducked under it then straightened up. ‘Who’s in charge?’
‘Senior Lieutenant Gorokhov.’
‘Thanks.’
She looked down at her dusty shoes and worried about contaminating the scene; maybe Primakov’s prissiness was starting to rub off on her.
‘Don’t worry about those,’ the corporal sniffed. ‘Some workman found the body; there’s nothing they haven’t stepped on or pissed over.’
It was colder under the canopy of the trees and a light breeze brought goose pimples to her arms. Despite the corporal’s advice, she walked along the edge of the path, keen to avoid the mass of shoe and boot prints already on the ground.
She stopped at a clearing where six workmen were sitting cross-legged with their hands underneath their buttocks. They were all silently miserable under the shade of an ancient Siberian Oak; their darker skins and cheap clothing giving them away as immigrants. Another OMON stood over them, his rubber-coated steel baton poised at shoulder height, ready to lash out for the slightest infraction.
‘Go through there.’ The OMON officer tipped his head towards another path. ‘That’s where these baboons came from.’
She outranked him too but wasn’t tempted to reply. Following his instructions, she heard voices before seeing a group of three uniformed policemen standing around a fire-pit. Closer, the smell of wood smoke was damp and acrid.
‘Welcome to the party.’ An officer with a drawn face hel
d out his hand. ‘Ilya Gorokhov, Senior Lieutenant.’ He smelled of a freshly smoked cigarette.
‘Senior Detective Captain Ivanova. I’ve got a missing person.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Not enough robberies and murders for you these days?’
She shook her head then ran her first two fingers against her thumb in the international sign for money: ‘Rich kid.’
Gorokhov flicked his eyebrows in a conspiratorial gesture. ‘That would do it I guess.’
‘Mind if I take a look?’
He stepped aside to give her a view of the pit. All traces of Gorokhov’s cigarette breath were soon obliterated by the stink of burnt meat and the damp, bitter smell of the extinguished fire that had smelled so pleasantly outside the clearing. Closer, there was something else too. ‘Petrol or kerosene?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘I’m a chain smoker – my sense of smell was taken out and shot a long time ago.’
She peered into the pit then walked around the circumference. ‘Where is it?’
‘Most of the logs are in place, we only moved a few to make sure it was human.’
‘How do you know?’
‘So you see’ – he extended a nicotine-stained finger and traced an outline over the pit – ‘this is the body.’
She leaned over, cupping a hand to her brow to shield her eyes from the sun cutting through the clearing. The logs were blackened and glistening ‘I can’t…’
‘Look closer.’
Then she saw it, half-covered in ash and curled grotesquely, the head almost touching the knees. She shifted position to get a better view of the face, of muscles and sinews shrunk against a black skull like a mummy’s. The fat in the lips was gone leaving a macabre grin on an eyeless skull. She turned away sharply.