Dead Meat

Dead Meat

Philip Kerr

*

September 1992

DEAD MEAT

Hm, so you want some bread?' Ivan Ivanovich will ask.

What's wrong with that, sir? I could eat a horse!'

Hm. I suppose you want some meat as well?'

I'll be pleased with anything you're kind enough to give me.'

Hm, so meat's better than bread, is it?'

You just can't be fussy when you're hungry. Anything's welcome.'

From 'How Ivan Ivanovich Quarrelled with Ivan Nikiforovich', by Nikolai Gogol

A Russian can never resist stories, even the ones he tells to himself.

Lone travellers on the night sleeper from St Petersburg will be well aware of the hazards of sharing a two-berth compartment with a stranger. The Red Express is often filled several weeks in advance and the railway booking office takes little account of the sexes of those whom fate has decided to throw together for eight hours or more. My own travelling companion, a handsome-looking woman with beautiful, muscular legs, must have thought me a very dull fellow. During the first part of our journey her efforts to engineer a conversation were almost unflagging, and in this respect she seemed to have more gambits than Gary Kasparov: spiralling inflation, ethnic conflict, increased crime, the Kuril Islands, the price of bread, even I think this is right some nonsense about how placentas from Russian abortions were used to make expensive face creams for Western women. She tried everything to get me to talk short of using a cosh and a bright light.

Most men would have given their thumbs for such an attractive and well connected travelling companion as I had, especially one so obviously keen to talk. Good-looking women are usually cold and distant when you are lucky enough to meet them alone on a train in a two-berth compartment. But my replies were monosyllabic to say the least. Not that I am usually the uncommunicative type; however on this occasion my mind was elsewhere. Sometimes it was racing through the mid-summer's air and over the flat countryside that lay spread like a vast counterpane outside the window of our carriage. But mostly it was back in St Petersburg with Yevgeni Ivanovich Grushko and the men of the Central Board.

Chekhov says that a storyteller should show life neither as it is nor as it ought to be, but as we see it in our dreams. Dozing in my warm berth that was indeed how it all seemed to me now, for in a sense my story had started on this very train when, several weeks before, I had travelled in the opposite direction, on a temporary attachment to St Petersburg's Central Investigating Board at the orders of my superiors in Moscow. It was hoped that I might improve my knowledge of how the Mafia worked.

Not that Moscow's underworld is any less in evidence these days. Far from it. No, it was just that the St Petersburg Central Board, and in particular its most senior detective, Yevgeni Ivanovich Grushko, seemed better able to deal with the Mafia than we were in Moscow. The figures would speak for themselves if I had them to hand. Every man has his own special subject. The shepherd knows more about sheep than the most dedicated of scholars. Grushko knew more about the Mafia than any other policeman in the new Commonwealth of Independent States. But there is a saying that ought to have warned me to be careful of him: beware of a man of one book.

Not that there was much that would have made you immediately wary of him. His face, like his manner, was open and friendly. He wasn't particularly tall, although he looked fit enough. He wore his grey hair long on top of his head, like the young Elvis Presley, and, when I had known him long enough to become aware of his habits and saw that he combed it very often, I recognised that this was his only personal vanity. Nor was Grushko an unlettered man, as I discovered within a few minutes of shaking his sandpaper-hard hand that first morning we met, on the platform at Petersburg's Moscow Station.

Did you have a good journey?' he asked, picking my bags off the station platform.

I explained how I had been obliged to share the compartment with an extremely smelly babushka who had snored like a saw for almost the entire journey.

Have you been in St Petersburg before?'

Not since I was a schoolboy.'

That seemed so long ago, in those early Sputnik-Gagarin days, when it seemed that the Soviet Union was the most impregnable nation on earth. For a moment I was transported back to the same railway-station platform; I was holding my mother's hand and listening to her explain how we would see the most fabulous palaces in the world, while my father unloaded our bags from the carriage. I did not hear much of what Grushko said for at least a minute or two. When I came out of my reverie he was quoting what Dostoevsky had said about St Petersburg.

This is the most abstract and intentional city in the whole world, he said, without a hint of self-consciousness and led me out of the station on to Nevsky Prospekt, where he had parked his Zhiguli.

I said that I had always wondered what Dostoevsky had meant by that particular remark about Leningrad.

St Petersburg it's an ideal,' he explained. The product of one man's will. By the way, never ever call it Leningrad, except in retrospect. That's all finished now.'

I looked along the length of the broad thoroughfare. It was a warm June day and things could not have looked less abstract. There is an impressive solidity about St Petersburg.

Of course, you wouldn't think it now,' he said taking a deep, euphoric breath of the early morning air, but this really is a very stupid place for anyone to have built a city. Ice-bound for half the year, although there are some people who say our northern frost is very good for the health. Little more than a swamp when Peter the Great first came. All the stone had to be brought in specially. Thousands of the poor serfs died. That's why they say St Petersburg is built on bones.'

He opened the boot of the Zhiguli and then squashed my luggage underneath the lid as if he had been crushing the body of one of those poor serfs.

Perhaps that's why there's so much crime here in Peter,' he said, offering me a cigarette. All that blood.'

I thought of what the poet Anna Akhmatova had said about how it loves blood, the Russian earth, and for a brief moment I was tempted to offer some intellectual credentials of my own. Instead I said something more banal, about there being crime everywhere these days.

Ah, but not like here,' he said, opening the car door for me.

I had the impression that he was reminding me of the purpose of my visit. After all, I had been sent from Moscow to learn how they dealt with the Mafia in St Petersburg. But what he said next seemed to contradict this thought.

Not like in Peter. After all, this is where crime got started. There aren't many places where there are as many gloomy, harsh and strange influences on the soul of man as there are in St Petersburg. Here, I'll show you. It's only a little out of our way.'

He climbed in beside me and started the engine. We drove west along Nevsky for a short distance. The pavements were crammed with people who seemed rather scruffier than their Moscow counterparts, but perhaps that was only because the buildings were more beautiful. We turned north along one of the city's canals and then he stopped and pointed at the top floors of a yellowing tenement.

Up there,' he said. On the fourth floor. That's where the student Raskolnikov killed the old woman and her sister.'

He spoke as if this were one of the more celebrated cases of the day. I looked at the building and found to my surprise that it was too easy to recall the scene from Dostoevsky's novel as something that had actually taken place. An axe-murder. There was nothing Russians loved to read about in their newspapers more than a good axe-murder. Especially if the murderer happened also to dismember his victims and eat them. It just wasn't a proper murder without blood. Lots of it.

Looks like it might have happened yesterday,' I observed.

Things are a bit like that in Peter. Nothing much has changed since Dostoevsky's day. The Mafia have taken over from the nihilists. They believe in nothing except themselves and their ability to inflict pain and hardship on others in the name of one false god or another.'

There's only one false god today that commands any real devotion,' I said. And that's money.'

Not that the students have been entirely forgotten,' Grushko added. Believe it or not we arrested a student just the other day. A medical student from the Pavlov. You know how he's putting himself through med. school? As a hired assassin for the Mob. He got himself interested in guns while he was doing his national service in Afghanistan. Became a marksman. We reckon he's murdered at least ten people.' He shook his head. Compared to the likes of him, Raskolnikov was a puppy.'

A babushka emerged from the courtyard at the back of the tenement building. A small, dried-up woman of about sixty wearing a threadbare raincoat. To my surprise she was carrying a small strong-box under her arm. Her sharp eyes fixed on our car and she stared at us with hostile suspicion. She might have been the actual moneylender whom Raskolnikov had killed. Grushko noticed her too and nodded.

A ghost,' he said quietly. Peter's full of them.'

He glanced in the mirror and quickly ran a comb through his well-oiled hair. When he had finished it looked exactly the same. I noticed a strong smell of mothballs on the sleeve of his dark grey jacket.

Before we go to the Big House,' he said, I wanted to get something clear between us.'

I shrugged. Go ahead,' I said.

He fixed me with a penetrating stare.

I've been told you're here because Moscow thinks we have a good record against the Mafia: that you want to look at the way we do things in Peter.'

That's right. It's an intercity liaison thing. An exchange of ideas, if you like.'

Yes,' he said, I read General Kornilov's memo explaining your visit. Sounded like bureaucratic shit to me.'

I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

What's wrong with exchanging a few ideas?'

Peter's a smaller place than Moscow. Rather more provincial, too. Everyone knows everyone else. It's harder to lose yourself here than it is in Moscow. What would you say if I told you it was as simple as that?'

Well, I, er. I'd suggest you were being modest. Look, I'm not here to patronise you. We can learn from each other, surely.'

Grushko nodded, measuring his next remark.

Let me be frank with you,' he said. If you're here to investigate me and my men, you won't find anything. I can't speak for the rest, but there's no corruption in my department. We're clean. Have you got that?'

I'm not here to investigate you,' I said coolly.

I don't like spies any more than I like policemen who are getting their paws stroked.'

That leaves me out then.'

Give me your hand.'

I held out my hand thinking that he wanted to shake it. Instead he turned it over and stared closely at my palm as if intending to read it.

You're not serious,' I said.

Be quiet,' he growled.

I shook my head and smiled. Grushko scrutinised my hand for almost a minute and then he nodded sagely.

Can you really read palms?'

Of course.'

So what do you see?'

It's not a bad hand,' he said. All the same, your head line seems to be nearly split in two parallel lines.'

And what does that tell you?'

This reading is for my benefit, not yours.'

I drew my hand away and grinned uncomfortably.

That's some forensic method you have there. Does it work with the Mafiosi?'

Sometimes. Most of them are pretty superstitious.' He took a last drag at his cigarette and grinned. You wanted to find out how we do things in Peter. Well, now you know.'

Great. Now I can get back on the train and go straight back to Moscow to make my report. Grushko's a great detective because he can read palms. They'll love that. What do you do for an encore: a little levitation, maybe? Hows about I ask you to find some water round here?'

That's easy.'

Grushko wound down the window and threw his cigarette into the canal. I was soon to learn this particular waterway was called the Griboyedev Canal. Maybe he could sense something in the future at that. How else can one explain the fact that in only a few hours we would be back at that same tenement to investigate the murder of one of Russia's best-known journalists?

2

I am a lawyer by training. This is common enough among investigators. The job requires a knowledge of criminal evidence and procedure that distinguishes it from that of the detective. It may sound typically pedantic, but as a lawyer I think that in order to understand this story you must have some understanding of the background the Big House, the Department of Internal Affairs and its various departments and, of course, the Mafia.

Most of what I now know about the Mafia I know from Yevgeni Ivanovich Grushko. Perhaps the origins and modus operandi of the Mafia as described by him were not quite so dry as they appear here, but I have had to paraphrase the contents of many separate conversations that took place over a period of several weeks. Most of what I know about the departments that are included in Internal Affairs is written from an investigator's perspective and it is perhaps worth noting that a detective could and probably would explain things rather differently.

Every Commonwealth city has its Big House a building the sight of which encourages people to quicken their step, for it is here that the militia and the KGB have their headquarters. But since this story began almost as soon as I arrived in St Petersburg it seems only right that I should describe this particular Big House as I first saw it, on the morning that Grushko collected me from the railway station.

Near the top of Liteiny Prospekt and close by the south bank of the River Neva, Peter's Big House is an enormous six-storey building that occupies the whole block between Vionova Street and Kalajeva Street. Presumably there must have been an architect although, as with most of the modern buildings in this country, it is difficult to see how. Imagine two huge squares of cheese (and in Moscow these days, imagining cheese is as near as one actually gets to it) one red, one yellow, lay the first on top of the second and you have an idea of what it looks like. Something forbidden and inhuman anyway, and that I suppose was the whole of the architect's idea: to render the individual insignificant. This was an impression enhanced by the size and weight of the front door: as tall as a tram and almost as heavy, it would have been hard to enter the Big House without being overawed by the power of the State and those who, theoretically anyway, enforced its laws.

We flashed our identity cards to the militiaman on guard inside the door, ignored the empty cloakroom and crossed an entrance hall that looked as if it belonged to a public swimming baths.

At the top of the first flight of stairs Felix Dzerzhinsky's head occupied a plinth on his own personal mezzanine. If ever a man was destined for bronze it was Iron Felix who, in 1917 at Lenin's request, organised the Cheka. In 1923 this became the OGPU that, in 1934, became the NKVD that was the forerunner of the KGB, which will now be disbanded and called something else again. (If this country leads the world in any kind of manufacturing it is surely in the production of abbreviations and acronyms.) Until the Second Russian Revolution of August 1991 there were statues of Iron Felix all over the USSR. Now the only place you were likely still to find him was in the local Big House. Whatever his politics, he was a good policeman.

Grushko's office was on the second floor, at the end of a wide and dimly lit corridor. As a full colonel in the Criminal Services Department he had a good-sized office. There were whole families living in less space than that.

Criminal Services was part of the Central Board of Internal Affairs that occupied these first two floors. The upper four floors were the KGB's. The office next to Grushko's belonged to General Kornilov, the head of the Criminal Services Department and acting head of the Central Board of Internal Affairs in St Petersburg. This meant that Kornilov was also head of the Central Investigating Department and that he was not only Grushko's boss but mine as well.

People often ask me to explain the difference between the two departments Criminal Services and Central Investigating and to tell them which of them is more important, the detective or the investigator. Sometimes I think that these things seem complicated only because of how these two jobs are perceived in the West. I can't say how officers work outside the New Commonwealth but here, an investigator is in charge of how an indictment is prepared for the Prosecutor's Office. It's surely a very old argument which of them, the detective or the investigator, is more important, but it's a kind of typically Russian argument in that there is no right or wrong answer. It's not something that excites me very much, but then everyone is different. You scratch where it itches, as the saying goes. Detectives say that an investigator is never properly a policeman until he has tasted a criminal's fist. Generally it's best to say that within the whole forensic process the relationship between investigator and detective is one of cooperation between peers; and since both hold a military-style rank according to experience, things are usually fairly clear-cut. I am a lieutenant-colonel; and I have a small scar on the underside of my chin to prove that I have indeed had a taste of a criminal's fist.

Grushko's department, with which I was to liaise exclusively, investigating organised crime, was a relatively recent creation and did not yet operate at a federal level, although the existence of a Soviet Mafia had been well-known since 1987.

When we talk about the Mafia this is just an easy way of describing gangs of organised criminals. So far as Grushko knew there was no connection between them and the Mafia that existed in Italy and America. And whereas those gangs tended to be run along family lines, in Russia the gangs were often racially constituted Ukranian, Byelorussian, Georgian, Chechen, Ukrainian, Armenian, Tazhak, Azerbaijani, Kazakhpeople from what used to be the southern republics of the Soviet Union.

Like most inhabitants of northern Russia Grushko called them churki people from the swamps even though his name and downward-slanting eyes seemed to indicate that there was something of the Cossack in him. He could certainly drink more than any man I ever met. But to come back to our original flock of sheep, the churki were very different from their Italian-American counterparts. The suits they wore were not particularly well cut and they drove Zhigulis instead of large Cadillacs, although a few did own Mercedes. They tended to be younger men, often physically well endowed from years in state-subsidised sportor a labour camp. But while the Russian Mafia may not have lived as well as its Western stereotypes, it was just as ruthless.

If I had needed reminding of this I found myself quickly prompted by Grushko handing me a file of photographs almost the minute I set foot in his office.

Take a look at this little album,' he said. This is what happens to a cash-cow who holds out on her pimp.'

I am not a squeamish man. Even so the day needed to be a little older before I was ready to dwell on the various injuries that had been inflicted on the body of a seventeen-year-old prostitute as a precursor to her being drowned in a bucket of water. Perhaps if I had slept better on the overnight train from Moscow I could have put up more of a show of interest. As it was I glanced through the photographs, nodded quietly and then returned them without a word.

Just one of the cases we're dealing with at the moment,' Grushko said with a shrug. We know who did it: an Armenian they call the Barrel. He's an old customer.' He tapped the window-pane with his fingernail. One of the frozen-minded. Oh, you'll get to meet them all, my friend.'

I took out my cigarettes and came across the parquet floor to the dirty window with its cheap yellow curtains to offer him one. He took one into his thin lips and lit us both with a handsome gold lighter.

That's rather elegant,' I said, wondering how a policeman on Grushko's salary could afford such a luxurious-looking object.

From the Swiss police. We get all sorts of delegations coming to see us from Interpol nowadays. Tourists mostly, like all the rest of them. They come to spend their dollars and make sympathetic noises and then they go home again. Funny thing, though, wherever they're from, they always buy me a gold lighter as a thank you. Must be something about cops the world over. Mind you, it's just as well. I'm always losing them.'

The phone rang and while he was answering it I looked out of the window at the street below. Housewives were heading to the shops, crowding on to an already overcrowded trolley bus. They were none too gentle about it and for a moment I entertained myself with the thought of my ex-wife doing the very same thing somewhere in east Moscow.

I turned away and looked back at the room: Grushko's desk with its self-important array of telephones; on the wall, the huge map of St Petersburg with all twenty-two districts neatly marked out like cuts of meat; in the corner the huge safe containing Grushko's files and papers and, standing on top of this, a cheap plaster statue of Lenin, like the one I had left in my own office in Moscow; the line of chairs neatly ranged against the far wall; the fitted cupboard with its own wash-hand basin and coat hook; and the colour television set on which a girl was performing gymnastic exercises. I didn't know it then, but the story had already started.

Grushko replaced the receiver and, as he took a superhuman drag of his cigarette, closed one eye while fixing me with the other.

I think this will interest you,' he said. Come on.'

I followed him into the corridor that was busy with other detectives and investigators. He barked at two of them to come with us. On the way down to the car he introduced them as Major Nikolai Vladimirovich Vladimirov and Captain Alexander Skorobogatych and added that they were the best men he had.

Nikolai Vladimirov was a big, heavy man, with a pugnacious little boy's face, his green eyes set rather too closely together and his mouth almost permanently puckered, as if he was about to kiss someone. He wore a black sweatshirt with a Bugs Bunny motif. Alexander Sasha' Skorobogatych was a fair-haired, Nordic-looking man, his features long and lugubrious and his voice a whispering, sandy sort of rasp, as if he had spent the previous afternoon shouting at a football match. They made an odd trio, I thought. Nikolai and Sasha were each taller than Grushko by a head, and yet they were as careful of him as if he had been their own father; and although Grushko wasn't quite old enough I guessed him to be in his mid-forties it wasn't so very far from the truth either: Grushko was an old-fashioned sort of policeman and very paternal with all his men.

The car headed south along the banks of the Fontanka Canal. It seemed very beautiful and, but for the speed of Grushko's erratic driving, I might have been able to enjoy it. Almost to take my mind off the journey, I found myself quizzing Grushko about the Mob and how it got started in Russia.

You know, I've often thought that we simply swapped the Party for the Mob,' I said.

Grushko shook his head firmly.

Whatever gave you that idea?' he said.

I was just starting to explain when he cut me short.

No, no,' he said. The Mob is the product of our own Soviet greenhouse effect.' The car swerved one way and then the other along the road as he lifted one hand from the steering wheel to light another cigarette.

It came out of a black market which was allowed to flourish under Brezhnev. A black market was only ever a back-hander away from active encouragement, as the main operators were allowed to buy themselves legal immunity. So then, in order that they could offer larger bribes to more important Party officials. Well, you're an intelligent sort of fellow, for a Muscovite: work it out.'

They got themselves organised,' I said.

Then, after Brezhnev, organised crime received a bonus in the person of Mikhail Gorbachev.'

I don't see how we can hold him to account for the Mob as well as everything else.'

Grushko chuckled. Oh, I'm not saying that Gorbachev was some kind of Godfather. But it was his endorsement of the cooperative movement that gave the green light to people to start their own businesses. What he failed to realise was that operating a private business obliged all these would-be capitalists to break the law in a number of small ways. Well, that left them vulnerable to the Mob and its demands for protection. So you see, it was the Party which created the atmosphere that helped the Mob to grow.'

The Soviet greenhouse effect you were talking about.'

Precisely. But like everything built in the Soviet Union, the Party was poorly constructed and, as it became weaker, the Mob spread its roots and grew strong. Soon it was so tall that it pushed through those gaps in the roof that Gorbachev had made and, rather than perishing in the cold light of glasnost, the Mob thrived. By the time the Party collapsed, the Mob no longer needed it to survive.'

And now that the Party is outlawed?'

Grushko shrugged.

What remains of it has tried to ally itself with the Mob. After all, it's in both their interests to ensure the failure of everything from the free-market reforms to food aid from the West. Half the new cooperatives in Peter are a front for the Party. A useful way of laundering all the money they got away with after the coup failed. Party money or Mob money, it makes no difference to us. For most people in Peter the whole cooperative movement is synonymous with the Mafia.'

It's the same in Moscow,' I said. Where the businesses are legitimate they're a target for the racketeers.'

The cooperative restaurants and cafAcs are especially vulnerable,' said Grushko. Not only are they obliged by the nature of their business to operate in public, but also they rely on illegal supplies in order to be able to serve food in any reasonable quantities, as well as to justify the high prices they charge for it. A good dinner in one of the better cooperatives costs. how much would you say, Nikolai?'

The big man stirred out of the reverie he was sunk in. Grushko's erratic driving didn't seem to bother him much.

More than you and I could earn in a week, sir,' he growled.

Apart from the tourists, the only people who can afford to eat in such places are those Russians who have access to hard currency; and the crooks.'

In my book, they're one and the same,' said Nikolai.

Most of the cooperative restaurants in Peter are paying protection,' said Grushko. It's usually a fixed percentage of the takings.'

But how do the Mafia know how much that is?' I asked.

Nikolai and Sasha exchanged a look. Grushko smiled drily as he answered:

The restaurants are obliged to tell the city council so that they can pay their taxes. In confidence, of course. But for a small fee the Mafia can learn the precise figure. Which is why most of the restaurants fiddle their books in the first place. Then they pay less when eventually they get squeezed. Even so, it can be as much as a thing a day that they're paying these churkis. That's a thousand roubles to you and me. But before you can take that kind of burky off them, you've got to squeeze them hard. You're about to see just how hard that can be.'

He steered off the road and into a small parking lot next to a white-fronted building. I lurched forward in my seat as Grushko hit the brake. I got out of the car unsteadily and followed the others up to a heavy wooden door.

The Pushkin Restaurant on the Fontanka Canal was relatively new to the cooperative-restaurant scene. No expense had been spared with the decoration that, I discovered later, was a reproduction of the Green Dining-Room in the Catherine Palace at Pushkin. The walls were light green with white bas-relief ornamentation depicting a selection of scenes from Greek mythology. Two green marble pedestals, each displaying a small imitation jade urn, stood on either side of a white plaster fireplace. On the mantelpiece was a large gilt clock. And in all the arched windows curtains of shiny green satin obscured the view of the Fontanka. All the windows except one, that is. This was broken and blackened from the Molotov cocktail that had been thrown through it the previous evening.

Things could have been worse. None of the Pushkin's staff or privileged patrons had been injured: for once, the fire extinguishers had performed as they were supposed to. Apart from the window and a couple of well-scorched dining tables there was little other damage. But for one of the customers reporting the arson attack to the local militia, Grushko's department might never have heard about it.

Grushko sniffed at the blackened tables like an inquisitive cat.

Well, they knew what they were doing,' he said finally. They didn't leave out the oil. Amateurs usually forget it and just use gasoline. But it's the oil that makes a good Molotov. Makes the flame stick more.

The owner-manager, a Mr Chazov, did his best to play down the incident.

I don't think there's any reason for you people from Internal Affairs to become involved in something like this,' he said hopefully. It was nothing. Just a bunch of kids probably. Nobody's been injured, so can't we forget about it?'

And the men who did this?' Grushko replied obstinately. Do you think they'll forget about it?'

Like I said, it was most probably a bunch of kids.'

You got a look at them, did you?'

Not as such,' said Chazov. No, what I mean to say is, I heard them laughing.'

It's true, a grown man doesn't find much to amuse him these days,' said Grushko. But to be sure that these were kids just from their laughter, well, that's impressive.'

He smiled and wandered round the restaurant nodding appreciatively at the decoration. I saw him catch Nikolai's eye and jerk his head meaningfully. Nikolai nodded curtly and went through to the kitchens.

Of course, the criminals are getting younger and younger,' Grushko continued. Although it's equally possible that I'm just getting older and older. Either way they're vicious bastards and don't mind who they injure. But that's the carelessness of youth, I suppose. Wouldn't you say so, Mr Chazov?'

Chazov sat down heavily at one of the tables and dropped his head into his hands. He swept his lank brown hair back across his sweating head and then rubbed his unshaven jaw with the desperate air of a man who needed a drink.

Look,' he gulped, I can't tell you anything.'

I don't know that I've really asked you anything yet,' said Grushko. What I do know is that these men these kids they'll be back. And they'll keep coming back unless you help me. Next time someone might be seriously injured. Or worse.'

Please, Colonel, I have a family, you know?' There was a tremor in his voice.

Maybe I should ask them who did this.'

Nikolai reappeared in the doorway, almost filling it, like a toy bear in its box. He called to Grushko.

A cockroach scuttled out of our way as we followed the big man through the kitchen door. Dirty saucepans and unwashed dishes lay everywhere inside. Crates of vegetables stood on a greasy linoleum floor next to an open bag of foul-smelling garbage. Several flies performed slow aerobatics within easy range of a large slab of chocolate cake. My eyes fell upon a collection of tiny bottles that were collected in a plastic bag that had been placed on top of a box of apples. For a moment I thought they were phials of drugs, but on looking more closely I realized that each bottle contained a tiny fragment of human stool.

Chazov noted my wrinkled nose and shrugged.

Department of Health wanted some samples from the staff,' he said. We had a small outbreak of salmonella just after we opened.'

You don't have to leave them lying around in here, do you?' I said.

No, I guess not.' Chazov collected the bag of samples and walked out of the kitchen. I wondered where he was planning to put them this time.

Nikolai hauled open the door to a large walk-in fridge-freezer and Grushko touched his hairline with his eyebrows. There were cartons of meat stacked almost as high as the ceiling. For a moment we just stood there sniffing excitedly at the sour, fleshy air like a pack of hungry dogs.

Did you ever see so much meat, sir?'

Nikolai touched a piece of frozen beef that lay partly chopped on a butcher's block almost reverently, as if it had been a relic of St Stephen of Perm.

I'd almost forgotten what the stuff looked like,' Grushko said quietly.

Hard to remember on a militiaman's salary,' observed Nikolai.

Do you think it might be stolen?' I heard myself say.

Both men turned and looked at me with quiet amusement.

Well, I don't imagine he bought it in the state meat market,' said Grushko. No, these co-ops rely on illegal sources of supply. That's another reason why they're vulnerable to the squeeze.' He looked back at the meat for a second. I bet that's why he didn't want the militia involved in the first place.'

Nikolai fed a cigarette between his lips and closed the fridge door behind them.

Want me to sweat Chazov about it?' he said. It might help him to recall who tossed the vodka martini through the window.'

Good idea. Ask him better still, tell him, to come and explain it to us at the Big House tomorrow. That should give him something to think about this evening.'

Nikolai chuckled and lit his cigarette. The match dropping from his thick sausagey fingers stayed alight on the greasy linoleum. Grushko regarded it with friendly disapproval.

Maybe you're planning to sell them some fire insurance yourself.'

Nikolai grinned sheepishly and extinguished the small flame with the toe of his trainer.

Outside the Pushkin on Fontanka, Sasha was speaking on Grushko's car phone. Seeing Grushko he waved the handset at him and then stepped away from the open passenger door.

It's General Kornilov,' he whispered.

Grushko took the call and gradually his wide, peasant face grew more sombre. By the time he had finished listening to what the general had to say he was frowning so hard his brow looked as if it had been clawed by a bear. Sighing deeply he handed Sasha the phone and walked to the railing beside the canal, where he flicked his cigarette butt into the still brown water. I looked at Sasha who shrugged and shook his head. When Nikolai finally emerged from the restaurant I wandered over to where Grushko was standing.

You see that building?'

I followed his eyes across the canal to an old grey palace.

That's the House of Friendship and Peace. Well, there's precious little of that about, I can tell you. Not these days. He lit another cigarette and waved Nikolai and Sasha towards him.

I take it you've all heard of Mikhail Milyukin?'

The three of us said we had. There wasn't anyone who watched television or was a fan of the two most popular magazines of the day, Ogonyok and Krokodil, who hadn't heard of Mikhail Milyukin. As the old Soviet Union's first investigative reporter he was virtually a national institution.

He's been murdered,' said Grushko. And it's on our sheet.'

We usually leave the murder inquiries to the State Prosecutor's Office, don't we, sir?' said Nikolai.

Kornilov says that they want us to handle it.' Grushko shook his head vaguely. Apparently there are certain circumstances which make them think that it might be our flock of sheep.'

What sort of circumstances?' said Nikolai.

Grushko propelled himself off the railing and walked purposefully towards his car.

That's what we're going to find out.'

3

Zelenogorski lies about forty kilometres north-west of St Petersburg along the M10 which, some 150 kilometres further on, reaches all the way to the Finnish border. It wasn't much to look at. By the time I had realised that it was a town we had passed it by and were heading out into the country again, along a smaller A road that lies along the shores of the Gulf of Finland. Several minutes later we turned off this road and drove for a short way until we came upon a militia van parked at the edge of the forest. Grushko drew up beside the van and asked one of the militiamen waiting there for directions to the scene of the crime and the rest of their colleagues. Then we were off again. Uncomfortably fast, Grushko's small, strong hands a blur of opposite lock and gear changing, as if he had been a driver in some kind of car-rally. But the drive along the forest track seemed to cheer him up a little and when finally he caught sight of the other militia vans and brought the car to a slithering halt, he grinned sadistically at me. I wondered if he still thought I was there to spy on his department.

We got out and walked down a gentle slope towards a small clearing in the trees. The vans were parked around a black Volga that was the subject of attention for ten or fifteen experts and militiamen. A stout, red-haired woman wearing the uniform of a colonel of militia and who seemed to be in charge walked towards us. Grushko quickened his pace to greet her.

It's Iron Lenya,' Nikolai murmured. And I'm not wearing a tie.'

You don't even have a uniform, if I remember right,' said Sasha. You sold it to a Japanese tourist for 200 roubles.' Sasha chuckled and found a cigarette from his jacket pocket. He tossed it expertly into his mouth and lit a match with the flick of a thumbnail.

The head of the Department of Scientific Experts, Colonel Lenya Shelaeva, greeted Grushko coolly and ignored the rest of us altogether. In the weeks that followed I got to know her well enough to respect and even to like her. But she was particular about smartness among her own staff and while she and Grushko exchanged a few preliminary remarks, Sasha told me that Lenya had once sent a man home because he wasn't wearing a tie. Having had little sleep on the overnight train I wasn't exactly looking my best and I was glad that Grushko didn't bother to introduce us.

We followed her to the passenger door of the Volga. Inside the car a man lay slumped forward in his seat, his forehead resting on the blood-encrusted dashboard. There wasn't much that would have detained the average teleologist, assuming that there were still people who placed much credence in this kind of Marxist working method. The copeck-sized hole in the back of his head indicated the way in which he had met his end clearly enough. He stared at us with grey-green eyes out of a waxy, pale and overweight face. He was dead as mutton but the more I looked at him, the more I had the impression that with a decent-sized sticking-plaster to cover the bullet's exit wound, the man would have sat up and offered me a cigarette from the packet of Risk he still held in his podgy hand.

Grushko crossed himself and then sighed.

Mikhail Mikhailovich,' he said sadly. That's too bad.'

Did you know him?' Shelaeva sounded surprised.

Grushko nodded and for a moment I thought he was going to cry. His upper lip inflated as he struggled to bring himself under control. He cleared his throat several times before answering her.

Ever since the Openness,' he said, when Mikhail first started writing about the Mafia. That was when the government still denied that such a thing as a Soviet Mafia even existed. You could say that my own department owes its very existence to Mikhail Milyukin.' He sniffed loudly and then lit a cigarette with clumsy fingers. He helped us with a number of cases. Got us started with a few of them, too.'

Shelaeva turned her own mouth into a tight, thin slit of disapproval.

I always thought him a bit of a troublemaker myself,' she said crisply. Well, then, here you are: he's got you started on another case, hasn't he? All you have to do is find out who sat behind him in this car, sometime between twelve and two this morning, and blew his brains out. But let's not forget our small friend in the boot, shall we?'

She moved round to the back of the car, brushing past me as she came. Her tone had been so harsh and unsympathetic that I wasn't at all surprised to discover that she was wearing the same scent as my ex-wife. Shelaeva elbowed the militia photographer out of the way and presented the contents of the car boot with an indifferent wave of her rubber-gloved hand.

By contrast with the man in the passenger seat, the occupant of the Volga's boot could not have looked more dead. Bound hand and foot, and doubled up like the occupant of some ancient burial pit, it was difficult to say much about him save that he had been shot several times through a length of sticking plaster that covered his mouth.

Grushko sucked his cigarette as if reminding himself that he still had a mouth, tipped his head to one side the better to see the dead man's face and then uttered what sounded like a grunt of affirmation. But it was Nikolai who offered the explanation.

Looks like Mafia morse code, sir,' he said.

That is what it looks like,' agreed Grushko. Maintain radio silence.'

Sasha detached himself from our group and went over to speak to one of the militiamen. Having no particular taste for cadavers myself I was half inclined to join him, but then I was supposed to be gathering in these same small nuggets of Grushko's esoteric knowledge, so stayed put.

Well,' said Shelaeva, I guess it's details like that which made the State Prosecutor think this might be your case, Yevgeni Ivanovich.'

Grushko gave her a quizzical glance, no doubt wondering, as I was, if she had meant to be sarcastic or merely pedantic. I decided it was the latter.

She took up the position of an imaginary gunman, her arms extended in front of her as if she had been addressing a golf ball. It wasn't a bad stance. And she had the build to be a hard-hitter.

Your gunman stood here when he fired his shots,' she said. I guess only his mother could have missed him.'

She dropped down on to her haunches and pointed out several cartridges that were lying on the ground and which were indicated by small paper flags.

He used an automatic, I'd say. Something heavy: 10 millimetre, or .45 calibre. And with a high-magazine capacity too, judging from the amount of brass he left behind him. It looks as if he was enjoying himself when he pulled the trigger.'

Grushko bent forward to inspect them. At the same time he picked up a small flat stone that he used to stub out his cigarette before carefully putting it away in his pocket so as not to litter the scene of the crime. Then he placed the stone back where he had found it.

That's quite a lot of noise,' he said and looked speculatively about him as if searching for a sign that someone might have heard the shots above the sound of the sea lapping on the shingle beach and the wind coursing through the fir trees.

Maybe,' she said. But I don't think he was in much of a hurry. He was smoking when he pulled the trigger. There was a cigarette end among all those empty cartridges.'

Shelaeva led us a short distance from the car, to where a trestle-table had been erected. The various pieces of evidence that were collected on it looked like a secondhand stall on the Arbat. She selected something in a plastic bag.

And it looks like he prefers American,' she said.

Don't we all,' murmured Nikolai, regarding his own choice of smoke with distaste.

We found this on the back seat.'

Shelaeva handed Grushko the plastic bag containing the empty packet of Winston. He was about to return it to the table when Nikolai checked him.

Let's see that,' he said, taking the evidence bag from Grushko. It's been opened upside down.'

He's a careless bastard,' said Grushko. What does that prove?'

Well, it could mean that he's an ex-soldier.'

And how do you work that out?'

It's an old army trick I learned in Afghanistan,' he said, and glanced uncomfortably at Colonel Shelaeva.

So, what's the trick?' Grushko sighed impatiently.

If you open the cigarette packet the wrong way up, your dirty fingers don't touch the filters you know, the end you put in your mouth.'

You know, for the last twenty years, I've been wondering what those things were,' said Grushko.

I never knew soldiers were so fastidious,' said Shelaeva with raised eyebrows.

You do tend to be when there's no lavatory paper about,' said Nikolai, colouring.

Ah, I see.' Grushko chuckled quietly. Well, no need to be so bashful, Nikolai. We all know what that's like.'

This was undoubtedly true. For several weeks now there had been a deficit of lavatory paper in all the state shops. A day or so before leaving Moscow I had seen someone on the Rozhdestvenska Street market offering toilet rolls at fifty roubles each. Fifty roubles. That was my mother's weekly pension.

Grushko picked up a passport from the table. He turned the pages with the lugubrious air of an immigration official.

Belongs to the man in the boot,' said Shelaeva.

Grushko nodded absently and then turned his attention to where one of her men was photographing an area of ground not far behind the Volga.

What's happening over there?'

Some tyre tracks,' she said. There's not much tread on them, as you might expect, so don't even hope that we can make some kind of identification. And a couple of sets of footprints going between the two cars. My guess is that whoever shot Milyukin was already sitting in the back seat of the Volga when it arrived. He shot Milyukin and then he and the driver got out, shot the second man, and then walked back to the other car.'

Grushko wandered over to look at the car tracks.

Took their time leaving as well,' he said. Nothing panicky about these tyre tracks. These boys knew what they were about.'

Sasha had the rest of what was known from the local militia.

A local angler found the bodies at around seven o'clock this morning'

Grushko grimaced. I don't know that I would want to fish in these waters,' he said.

A keen angler myself, I said that I had been thinking that it looked like a pretty good spot. Grushko shook his head vigorously and pointed south at the horizon.

You can't see it from here, but on the other side of the bay, that's Sosnovy Bor.'

The nuclear reactor?'

He nodded. You wouldn't catch me fishing in these waters,' he said ominously. No telling what's been dumped here over the years.' He looked at Sasha, who continued with his information.

According to the local boys, the area is very popular with hunters,' he said. If anyone did hear those shots, I doubt they'd have thought it at all unusual.'

Yes,' agreed Grushko. There's elk round here, isn't there?

Sasha shook his head and shrugged.

They've checked with the GAI, and apparently the car is registered to ' Sasha consulted his notebook and turned the page to Vaja Ordzhonikidze.'

Ordzhonikidze?' said Nikolai. That name hits a thumb. Isn't he one of the Georgian team leaders?'

Grushko glanced at the passport he was still holding.

Not any more he isn't.' Catching my eye, Grushko added: A year or so ago, we tried to sew a number on his jacket for racketeering. Only he had sharp scissors. And a lawyer by the name of Luzhin. That's a name you'll get to know. He only works for Mafia clients.'

What do you think, sir?' asked Nikolai. The Georgian, giving Milyukin a story?'

Well, that's what it looks like,' Grushko admitted. Sasha, have the relatives been informed yet?'

No, sir.'

Then that's our next job.' He looked at me again and shrugged. You'd better come along. If you're going to find out about the Mafia, you need to study the science of bad news.'

4

We returned to St Petersburg and left Nikolai and Sasha to go in search of the Georgian's nearest friend or relative. Grushko and I drove back to the Griboyedev Canal where, just a few hours earlier, he had pointed out the scene of Raskolnikov's crime. He made no mention of this coincidence although from the expression on his face I had half an idea that he was thinking about it.

The Milyukins' flat was in a dilapidated, pre-Revolutionary building on the opposite side of the canal from the mosaic front of a church that stood a little further north. Grushko parked the Zhiguli, thoughtfully removed the windscreen-wiper blades, which he tossed on to the floor of the car, and then led the way into the backyard. By a cheap, unpainted wooden door was a push-button combination lock; the sequence of numbers was not hard to work out thanks to the forgetful, or possibly mischievous, soul who had scratched it on to the adjacent brickwork.

It's no wonder that there are so many burglaries,' Grushko observed. He pressed the keys and, as he opened the door and mounted the narrow staircase, something scuttled away into the darkness. The steps were quite worn down as in some ancient Egyptian mausoleum and the dirty brown walls were daubed with appropriately primitive sentiments.

We climbed to the fourth floor, collected our breath with a quick cigarette and then rang the antiquated bell-pull. Somewhere the bell tolled as if from a distant church tower and for a moment I had a vision of myself as that hungry, Napoleon-fixated student, preparing to commit one murder in the delusion that a hundred others might be saved. The hunger was easy enough to imagine: since the previous night I hadn't eaten much more than a piece of bread and a slice of cold meat. From the speed of my heartbeat you might have thought I was actually planning to go through with it.

After a minute or so we heard a key turn in the lock and the door opened as far as the sturdy chain would allow. The woman appearing in the gap was in her thirties, fair-haired and good-looking in a clever sort of way and wearing an expression that was worth a whole fistful of worry beads. Grushko flipped open his identity card.

Mrs Milyukin?'

It's about my husband, isn't it?'

Can we come in please?'

She closed the door, drew the chain and opened it once again, ushering us into the cluttered hallway of her communal apartment and then beyond, into the one large room that she and the man in the forest had called their home.

It was about nine square metres of space, with a double-size sofa bed, folded away, a shelving unit occupying one whole wall, a small coffee table, two armchairs and an enormous wardrobe. On the shelves were a large television set, a VCR and lots of books and videotapes, while on the table were the remains of a frugal meal. It was not a bad room by the average standards of Russian accommodation but at that particular moment I wished I could have been anywhere else. Mrs Milyukin folded her arms and braced herself to hear what she already knew in her bones.

I'm afraid I have bad news for you,' Grushko said evenly. Mikhail Mikhailovich Milyukin is dead.'

The dead man's widow, whose name was Nina Romanovna, twitched convulsively and let out a deep sigh, like one who has died herself.

Instinctively I turned away. Drawing back the curtain for a moment I looked out of the window. Across the canal the sun touched the church's highest cupola and turned this golden sphere into an imitation of itself that was almost too bright to look at directly. Probably Grushko could have endured the sight of it without flinching. By then he had already held the widow's bitter eyes for what seemed like an eternity.

Well,' she said finally, that's that.'

Not quite,' said Grushko. I regret to have to tell you that he was murdered. This officer and I have just come from the scene of the crime. There will have to be a formal identification, I'm afraid, but there's no doubt that it's him. And I will have to ask you some questions, Mrs Milyukin. It may seem insensitive obviously you want to be alone right now but the sooner I'm able to establish what were Mikhail Mikhailovich's last movements, the sooner I'll catch whoever is responsible.'

He spoke with a stiff formality as if he were trying to distance himself emotionally from what had happened. The widow nodded stiffly and found a handkerchief in the sleeve of her blue acrylic sweater.

Yes, of course,' she said, wiping her eyes roughly and then blowing her nose. A cigarette seemed to help her to get a grip of herself. She snatched a couple of quick drags and nodded that she was ready.

When did you last see your husband?'

It must have been around seven o'clock last night,' she said unsteadily. He went out somewhere, to see a contact he said, for some article he was preparing.'

Grushko thought of several questions at once.

Did he say who this contact was? Where they were meeting? When he would be back?'

No,' she said and turned away to tap her ash into the bottom half of a matrushka doll. Mikhail never discussed his work with me. He said that it was better that way so that I wouldn't worry about him. Usually I had to read Ogonyok or watch television to find out what he had been up to. Well, I dare say you're both familiar with Mikhail's work. He was always sticking his nose in where it wasn't wanted. He used to say that if the Soviet Union was a can of worms then he was the can-opener. The only trouble was ' She paused and Grushko finished what she had been going to say.

He left a lot of sharp edges.' Grushko shrugged. Yes, I see.' He paused for a moment. Well, I suppose the country's first investigative journalist was bound to make a few enemies.'

Nina Milyukin uttered a bitter, smoky laugh.

A few?' she said with derision. I think you'd better take a look for yourself.'

She went to the wardrobe door and drew the door open. Reaching inside she switched on a light to reveal a tiny office. A bare bulb hung from the top of the wardrobe over a small square desk and a battered old typewriter.

As you can see, we have a very small apartment,' she explained and started to select some box-files from a large recessed set of shelves. The sacrifice you make for living in a place with a bit of character. This was Mikhail's office.'

I was trying to see how the wardrobe seemed larger inside than outside when suddenly I understood the ingenuity of the arrangement. Lacking a back panel the wardrobe had been placed in front of a built-in cupboard that contained the dead man's extensive library. When Nina Milyukin stepped out of the makeshift study bearing several of the box-files I went inside and looked about more carefully.

Some of the books had only recently been made available. Quite a few would have been almost impossible to get hold of at any price. Books printed in English and German occupied a whole shelf of their own. It was the kind of library I had always dreamed of having myself.

On the desk was a Filofax that I opened and looked up the previous day's date, but no entry had been made. I turned a few pages forward. The handwriting was long and girlish. It seemed hardly suitable for a great journalist. Above the desk was a felt-covered pinboard, and on it were some postcards of London and the Pyramids, a membership card of the Felis Cat-Lover's Club and, in pride of place, a photograph of a smiling Milyukin shaking hands with Margaret Thatcher. But it was not this that interested me so much as the photographs of Nina Milyukin, for in one of them she was naked. It had been taken in some other apartment, in a pose more provocative than artistic: wearing only a pair of stockings she stood facing the camera, her hands clasped behind her back, her head lowered almost penitently, as if she had done something of which she was slightly ashamed.

Perhaps the taking of the picture itself had been sufficient embarrassment.

These letters were forwarded by Krokodil and Ogonyok,' she was explaining to Grushko. They're mostly all like that one. Hate mail is the only kind of letter that never gets lost by the Post Office. He tried to keep those hidden from me, but there's not much a man can keep hidden from his wife in an apartment this size.'

When I stepped out of the wardrobe, bringing the Filofax with me, Grushko handed me the letter he had been reading and shook his head despairingly.

Comrade Milyukin,' it read. Your article in Krokodil on the Leningrad black market made us all laugh so much. Your suggestion, that it is only when people are able to resist this kind of consumerism that the country will be able to rebuild itself, is absurd. Why should they when there's nothing in the shops but empty shelves and excuses. It's bastards like you who try and spoil it for everyone. I hope that one of the prostitutes you are always writing about no doubt from your own personal experience gives you AIDS. I hope you pass it on to your wife and that she passes it on to the man she is probably screwing. Yours, a well-wisher.'

The thought of her screwing another man reminded me of the photograph in the wardrobe and I was tempted to go and take another look at it.

Are they all like this?' I asked.

There are plenty worse than that,' she said, extinguishing her cigarette and lighting another.

When we still discussed his work, Mikhail used to quote a poem by Pasternak, about how poetry is murderous. If I had known that this is what happens, when I at first stood up and read; that poetry is murderous, will strangle you and leave you dead I would

Grushko interrupted her, completing the quotation. I would have decided not to play games with reality, he said.

At first I was impressed that Grushko had been able to quote Pasternak with such ease; and then I found myself wondering about the pregnant pause he had brought to the line of poetry. I asked myself if he might have intended some criticism of Nina Milyukin, or indeed of Milyukin himself?

Mikhail said that the same had become true of journalism.' She spoke with uncertainty, as if she too had detected some sarcasm.

Yes,' said Grushko, looking over another of the letters, I heard him say that.'

You knew my husband?'

Oh, yes.'

He never mentioned you, Colonel Grushko.'

No, well, I dare say he had no wish to worry you. Mikhail Mikhailovich put a number of cases our way. Cases which involved the Mafia. You can be proud of him. He was a fine man.'

Nina Milyukin blinked sadly and nodded without enthusiasm, as if not much encouraged by what Grushko had said. She coloured visibly.

He was a fine man,' she repeated. A real hero.'

It was evident that she was on the edge of saying something that she might have come to regret.

These threats,' said Grushko. Were there any he took especially seriously?'

He took them all seriously. You understand, I'm guessinghe tried to avoid talking about this sort of thing '

So as not to worry you, yes, you said '

But in the last few months, I think some of it really got to him. He started to have nightmares. And he was drinking quite heavily.'

Grushko frowned and shook his head.

And he never explained what was troubling him? He never once tried to share his worries? I find that hard to believe. Oh, I'm not suggesting you're lying or anything, Mrs Milyukin. No, I'm just puzzled as to your relationship with him. You'll forgive me for asking I'm afraid I have to ask these questions sometimes but how were things between the two of you?'

Nina Milyukin reached for the handkerchief again.

We were quite happy, thank you,' she said. There were no problems. At least no problems that anyone else '

Those are the sort of problems I'm talking about,' Grushko persisted. The usual ones.'

She shook her head firmly.

We were quite happy, thank you,' she repeated coolly. For a moment she was silent, and then she added: You must understand, Mikhail was a very traditional kind of man. Perhaps you know how the poem goes on: When feeling dictates your lines, you step out like a slave, to pace the stage, and here art stops, and earth and fate breathe in your face.a__ Mikhail set great store by fate, Colonel.'

Fate comes to us all,' he murmured and then waved vaguely at the boxes of letters. I shall have to borrow these for a while,' he said. As well as any diaries, notebooks, address-books and videotapes he may have kept. I don't doubt that this death will be connected with something he had written or said.'

I suppose it can't harm him now,' said Nina Milyukin. Yes. Take anything you want.' She bent down to retrieve an Aeroflot bag from behind the sofa bed and handed it to Grushko.

Here,' she said. You can use this to carry it all in.'

We left her sitting in an armchair on the verge of some serious crying. Grushko closed the door carefully behind us as we made our way into the dilapidated hallway that led to the kitchen and bathroom that the Milyukins shared with the other people who lived in the apartment. A couple of bicycles and several pairs of skis rested against a damp-stained wall and beside these articles were standing an old gentleman, tall and silver-haired, with glasses and a Trotsky-style beard and moustache, and a woman wearing a blue silk headscarf, whom I took to be his wife. The old gentleman cleared his throat and addressed us respectfully.

We were very sorry to hear about Mr Milyukin, Comrade Colonel,' he said and, noticing the question that rose in Grushko's eyes, he shrugged apologetically. The walls in this place they're not much better than cardboard.'

Grushko nodded sternly. Tell me, Mr ?'

Poliakov. Rodion Romanovich Poliakov. And this is my wife, Avdotya Iosefovna.'

Have you noticed any strangers hanging round this building recently?'

We've lived in this apartment since Stalin's time,' replied the old gentleman. A long time ago we realised that life is a lot safer if one never sees anything. Oh, I know things are a lot different these days, Comrade Colonel '

Just Colonel,' said Grushko. You can forget the Comrade now.'

Poliakov nodded politely.

There was nothing unusual you noticed lately, Mr Poliakov?'

Before her husband could answer, Mrs Poliakov had spoken: Mikhail Milyukin was stealing food from our fridge,' she said bitterly. That's what we noticed, Colonel.

Grushko raised his eyebrows and sighed wearily. This was trivial stuff. There was hardly anyone living in a communal apartment who did not sometimes have an argument about food with whomever they were sharing. I remembered once coming to blows with a fellow tenant about the ownership of a bottle of pickles.

Avdotya, please,' scolded the old man. What does that matter now? The man is dead. Try to show a little respect.' His wife turned her head into his bony shoulder and began to weep. Poliakov took hold of his beard and, holding his chin close to his breast, he peered over the top of his glasses at Grushko.

I must apologise for my wife, Colonel,' he said. She's not been well. If there's anything I can do ?'

Grushko opened the heavily reinforced door.

Just keep an eye on Mrs Milyukin, will you?'

Yes, of course, Comrade Colonel.'

Grushko hesitated to correct him again.

If you do remember something,' he said after a moment or two, something important that is ' he glanced meaningfully at Mrs Poliakov call me at the Big House on Liteiny Prospekt. That's where you'll usually find me. At least, that's where my wife is sending my laundry these days.'

We went back down the evil-smelling stairs to the yard. Grushko tossed Milyukin's Aeroflot bag into the car boot and shook his head with frustration.

You can't teach these old dogs new tricks,' I offered.

No, it's not that,' he said. It's Mrs Milyukin. How can she know so little about her husband's affairs? Did she never hear him on the telephone? Did she never read something he left lying around their room?'

That's not so hard to believe,' I said. I didn't know that my wife was screwing my daughter's music teacher. She'd been screwing him for two years and I hadn't a clue. And me an investigator. You'd think I might have noticed something, wouldn't you? But no. Not a bit of it. Bad enough to lose my wife. But it looked as if I'm not very good at my job, either. I mean, I ought to have been suspicious.'

So how did you find out?'

My daughter's piano-playing,' I said. After two years of music lessons, you'd expect anyone to improve a little. But my daughter seemed to be playing as badly as when she started. Then I found out that she was having only one lesson a month and not the two I was paying for. The other lesson was for my wife. Imagine that. Paying someone to screw your wife.' I allowed myself a smile. I was past being upset about it.

Grushko smiled back uncertainly.

Myself,' he said, I have absolutely no ear for music. But I can still recognise a false note when I hear one. And I tell you, there's something about that woman.'

I recalled the picture on the pinboard, the large, almost flawless breasts, the curving belly and the squirrel's tail of hair.

There certainly is.'

5

My own office was located in a building that adjoined the back of the Big House. To go from one to the other required that you walk along the street. Nothing to it in summer I thought, but I didn't imagine that it would be much fun in the middle of winter. The entrance was on Kalayeva Street, where Grushko had parked his car. Kalayeva was one of those women who had helped to assassinate Tsar Alexander II in 1881. The Soviets called Kalayeva a heroine. These days we would have called her a terrorist.

Grushko led the way through an anonymous-looking door that gave on to a small seating area where, under the bored eye of a young militiaman, witnesses in a whole variety of cases waited to be examined on their statements by investigators. We showed our passes, easily recognisable in their cheap red plastic folders and went upstairs. The walls of the stairwell were being painted.

Why does it always have to be green?' Grushko complained loudly. Every public building I go in these days someone's painting it that awful bird-shit green. Why couldn't we have something else, like red for instance?'

The painter took the cigarette out of her mouth slowly. Like most Russian workers she didn't look as if she ever did anything quickly.

Red's finished,' she said. Green is all there is.'

Grushko grunted and walked on.

If you've got a problem with that,' she yelled after him, then take it up with my supervisor. But don't complain to me. I just work here.'

The curtains were drawn in the small shabby office that was to be mine, although they did little to hinder the passage of the sharp northern light. I took a look out of the window and decided to leave them the way they were. Weeks later I heard someone ascribe the drawn curtains to my sensitive eyes a not unreasonable hypothesis since I already wore tinted glasses but really it was only because I preferred not to have to stare out of a window that hadn't been cleaned in ten years.

Mikoyan's the chief of the State Investigating Agency in Peter,' Grushko explained. Only he won't be here to welcome you.' His short snout wrinkled with disapproval. Right now he's in Moscow, explaining his part in last summer's coup. I could be wrong, but I don't think he'll be back. So until a new chief is appointed you should report straight to Kornilov. But if you need anything ' he looked around the office and shrugged apart from anything that costs money that is, then just pick up the phone and speak to me.' He waved his hand at the battery of telephones that sat on my desk like the keys of a typewriter.

Which one?'

He picked up one of two enormous black Bakelites. Internal,' he said. Six lines apiece.' He dropped the ancient telephone back on to its bunk-sized cradle and selected one of the more modern phones. The ones that look like toys are your outside lines.' Grushko glanced at his watch.

Come to my office just before four,' he said. I'm seeing Kornilov then. I'll introduce you.' He walked to the door. One more thing. The canteen here is disgusting. If you must eat, bring something. That is, always supposing you can find something. By the way, where are you staying?'

With my brother-in-law Porfiry. Or rather, my ex-brother-in-law. I'd better give him a ring and let him know I've arrived.'

Well, there's always a sofa at my place if he's forgotten about you.'

Thanks,' I said, but Porfiry's not the kind to extend an invitation lightly. Especially since he's charging me fifty roubles a week.'

The sentimental sort, eh?

That's right.

All happy families are the same,' he chuckled on his way out of the door.

When Grushko had gone I called Porfiry at his office and told him I was in St Petersburg.

Whereabouts?' he asked.

At the Big House. On Liteiny Prospekt.'

Jesus,' he laughed, what did you do? Want me to pick you up on my way home tonight?'

That'd be nice, except that I'm not sure what time I'll be through here.

Got you working on a case already, have they?'

Two, as a matter of fact. I might even be late.'

Don't worry. It's not like Katerina's cooking anything special.' He chuckled. Same as any other night, really. Have you got the address?'

Yes. I picked it out of the Good Hotel Guide.'

You and the rats, I guess. See you tonight.'

I sat down at my desk and lit a cigarette. It's surprising the amount of nourishment you can find in a cigarette these days. This one filled me up nicely. Then I went through my drawers checking that I had a good supply of the protocols that constitute an important part of the investigator's job: search protocols, identity protocols, arrest protocols, interrogation protocols, confiscation protocols and advocate protocols. There was an ample supply of all relevant paperwork as well as a few little luxury items like desk-fluff, a broken rubber band, a plastic clothes-peg, an empty box of matches, a handful of paper-clips and a solitary diarrhoea tablet.

After eating the diarrhoea tablet, which tasted better than I had expected, I set about preparing my chessboard' a large sheet of paper squared off into sections that was supposed to help me keep track of progress in the many cases I would be investigating. In the first square of the first column I wrote Chazov: firebomb' and then underneath this Milyukin &c Ordzhonikidze: Murders'. After that, I called the State Prosecutor's Office to introduce myself and made an appointment there for nine o'clock the following morning.

By now I was ready for a drink of something and a brief search of the filing-cabinet turned up a heating element and an earthenware jug. I had brought my own tin of coffee. I went to the lavatory to get some water and found it as unpleasant a place as I could have expected, being several millimetres deep in water and urine. I filled the jug from the one dripping tap and walked gingerly back to my office, leaving a trail of wet footprints behind me.

While the water for my coffee boiled I set about clearing my walls of newspaper cuttings and pin-ups. With more than a little self-consciousness I removed the large portrait of Lenin that hung behind my chair and placed it behind my filing-cabinet. The Party might have been outlawed but there were still plenty of people who looked on Vladimir Ilyich as a national hero. At the same time as I was busy doing all of this, I learned something of the previous occupant of my office. He had left the Central Board to join the State Prosecutor's Office, a not uncommon career path. The photograph of the underground artist Kirill Miller pointed to a man with a sense of humour at least, while a communication from something called the Gulliver Club seemed to indicate someone who was very tall. But I still wondered how he could have afforded 80 roubles for the empty packet of German chocolate biscuits I found in the wastepaper bin. A present from some foreigner, perhaps. I took out my notebook and made a note of that.

At ten minutes to four I returned to the Big House, where I found Nikolai and Sasha typing up their reports, and they told me what had happened when they visited the dead Georgian's apartment.

Vaja Ordzhonikidze had lived on the seventeenth floor of a block of flats in an enormous housing estate across the Neva, to the north-west of Peter, on Vasilyevsky Island. Seen from the sea, these high-rise buildings presented an unbroken line of grey stone that resembled nothing so much as a range of sheer and unscalable cliffs. This impression of inaccessibility was uncomfortably reinforced for the two detectives by a creaking laundry-basket of a lift that broke down while they were in it, leaving them in complete darkness between the ninth and tenth floors. Or they thought it had broken down until, two or three minutes after coming to an almost complete halt there was some movement on the cable that supported the platform the doors opened a crack and a small boy's face appeared near the lift cabin's ceiling.

Hoi, mister,' he said, how much to switch the power back on?'

Nikolai Vladimirivich, uncomfortable in confined spaces at the best of times, spoke angrily: You'll be in trouble if you don't,' he barked.

Being rather more pragmatic than his larger colleague, Sasha took out his wallet and thumbed out a small bank note.

How about five roubles?' he said holding the money up to the urchin's face.

Ain't you got no hard currency?' the boy asked disappointedly. No dollars, no deutschmarks?'

I'll give you hard currency,' snarled Nikolai. You don't know how hard. When I've paid you, you won't sit down for a week.'

Sasha took out his cigarettes and added two to the offered ransom.

Five woods and a couple of chalks, you little '

Done,' said the boy. Shove 'em through.

The doors closed behind the price extorted, returning the lift cabin once again to darkness.

Didn't they teach you anything at the Pushkin Police Academy?' said Nikolai. You should never give in to blackmail.'

At which point the light flickered on and the lift assumed its rusty, shuddering ascent.

When they rang the Georgian's bell the door was answered by a heavily made-up girl of about twenty wearing a black silk dressing-gown and an equally dark scowl. She looked like the sort who could have smelled hard currency inside a bottle of aniseed. A whore who knew these men were militia from nothing more than the squeak of their shoe-rubber.

He's not here,' she said, gathering the gown over her generous chest and chewing her gum defiantly.

That much we know already,' said Nikolai and pushing her aside he ambled into the apartment.

The furnishings were expensively gaudy, with an abundance of electrical equipment, some of it still in the boxes.

Oh yes,' said Nikolai with obvious admiration, very comfortable indeed.'

Sasha went over to the window. A large telescope mounted on a wooden tripod was pointed out to sea.

Check the view,' he said and ducked down to try the telescope. Nikolai joined him at the window. Panoramic, or what?'

The girl finished lighting her cigarette and snatched it angrily from her crimson-coloured mouth.

Have you got a search protocol?'

To look out of the window? said Nikolai. 'I hardly think so.

So what's this all about, eh?'

She sat down on an imitation leather sofa that creaked like the sound of falling timber. Her dressing-gown slipped away to reveal a long white thigh but she made no move to cover herself. The girl knew that militiamen were easier to handle when they had something to distract their eyes. She shifted her bottom and let some more of the gown slide away until she was satisfied that they could see her flimsy underwear.

Are you Vaja's girlfriend?' Nikolai squatted down in front of a compact-disc player and began to amuse himself by pushing the automatic disc drawer in and out. Or just his business associate?'

Could be I'm his bloody astrologer,' she sneered. But what's it to you?'

Nikolai turned away from the disc player and looked with undisguised discrimination at the girl's crotch.

You should have been keeping a closer eye on his chart, sweetheart,' he said. Your Georgian friend's planetary aspect just took off for another galaxy.'

The girl frowned and, sensing that something was wrong, started to cover herself.

Look, is Vaja in trouble or something?' she said.

Not with us, he isn't,' said Sasha and went into the kitchen.

I'm afraid he's dead, love,' said Nikolai.

She let out a sigh and then crossed herself. Nikolai picked up a bottle of vodka from the drinks trolley and waved it in front of her face. The girl nodded. He poured one into a square-shaped tumbler and handed it to her.

In the kitchen Sasha found a short length of washing-line hanging above the sink. On it were pegged three condoms, washed and hung out to dry like odd socks. They were recognisably foreign, of a quality unattainable in their Russian counterparts colloquially known as galoshes and therefore worth the trouble of recycling. An expensive leather handbag lay open on the kitchen table. Sasha rummaged through it and found the girl's identity card. When he returned to the other room he handed it to Nikolai and looked quizzically at the girl.

Those rubbers in the kitchen,' he said. You on the game or something?'

Get stuffed,' she snarled, on the edge of tears.

Now, now,' said Nikolai, no need for that.' He glanced at the girl's ID. Galina Petrovna Zosimov,' he said. Galina. That's my mother's name.'

How would you know that?' said Galina.

Nikolai grinned patiently. Say what you like, if it makes you feel better,' he said.

She swallowed some more of her drink and stared back at him.

So what's the story?' she said.

The story? Well, Galina Petrovna, to tell the truth, we're not exactly sure. But the Zelenogorski Militia found him down in the woods early this morning. He'd been picnicking with some mean little teddy bears who tried to make him catch some bullets with his teeth. You know the kind of thing like maybe they thought he was an informer.' He paused for effect. That sort of behaviour is standard practice among a certain rougher section of our society.'

Galina tossed the rest of the vodka back.

That's the girl, said Nikolai. Takes the edge off the grief a bit, doesn't it?' She held up her glass and let Nikolai pour her another. He checked the label. It was good stuff, not the kind you needed to sprinkle pepper in to take care of the impurities. I'd join you myself, only I make a point of never drinking good vodka these days. I might acquire a taste for it again, and then my wife would have nothing to trade.'

He pulled up a stool and sat down opposite her, so close that he might have slipped her mule off and smothered her little foot with kisses.

So where was I? Ah yes, I was suggesting that Vaja might have been a pincher.'

Galina shook her head firmly. Leave it out. That wasn't his style at all. He was a lock, a top man.' She snorted contemptuously. I think you'd better point your cheap suits in some other direction.'

Someone thought he was pinching,' said Nikolai. The guy who shot him wasn't trying to drum up business for dentists, I'll tell you that much.

Did he have any enemies among the Georgians that you know about?' said Sasha.

Galina lit another cigarette. She took a hard drag with narrowed eyes and shook her head.

Maybe Vaja was giving it to one of his pals' wives,' Nikolai suggested. Well, you know what these Georgians are like. They're always chasing pussy. Or some old family feud maybe. Bad blood lasts a long time with these Georgian boys. How about it?'

No,' said Galina.

When was the last time you saw him?'

Last night.' She shrugged. Around seven. Just before I went out.'

Where did you go?' said Sasha.

Out. To meet a friend.' She swallowed some more of her drink and grimaced. I don't know why I'm drinking this. I don't even like vodka.' She put the glass down. There was a phone call from some guy he knew. Don't ask me his name because he didn't say. Whoever it was said he'd washed this fancy watch off some Jap tourist's arm and did Vaja want to buy it?'

And did he?'

Are you kidding? These Georgians are like magpies. They love the flashy stuff. Gold, diamonds, silver can't wear enough of it. Worse than Jews, so they are. Anyway, he arranged a meet.'

Did he say when, or where?'

Galina shook her head.

Sounds to me like he was this city's first fashion victim,' said Nikolai.

Galina grinned mockingly. Yeah, well, I can't ever see you making best-dressed detective of the year, Fatso. Vaja was a smart-looking guy.'

Not when I last saw him,' said Nikolai.

Did you ever hear him mention the name of Mikhail Milyukin at all?' Sasha asked quickly.

The journalist? The one that writes for Krokodifi Where does he fit in?'

He's not writing Vaja's obituary,' said Nikolai. He and Vaja caught the same flight north.'

Yeah? You don't say. That's too bad. I liked his stuff.'

How about Vaja?' said Sasha. Was he a fan?'

She gave him a look of pity.

Vaja? He was a nice guy, but he was no reader. Take a look around. The only magazines he liked were the ones for the home gynaecologist.'

And the rest of Rustaveli Avenue?' said Nikolai, referring to the main street in Tblisi, the capital of Georgia. Where can we find them?'

Usually you'll find the whole raspberry round the corner,' said Galina, jerking her head at the window. At the Pribaltskaya Hotel. In the afternoon they like to make muscles of themselves in the gym. And in the evening they get mumbling drunk in the restaurant.'

Nikolai stood up. That thief,' he said, the one that stole the watch. If you do remember the guy's name '

Sure,' said Galina, standing up beside him. She came halfway up his chest. I'll send you a carrier-pigeon.'

She followed them to the door and opened it.

Hey, promise me you'll catch the bastards who did it and I'll give you some really useful information.'

We'll catch them all right,' declared Sasha.

Do you promise?'

Promise.'

Take the stairs. And with that she kicked the door shut in their faces.

General Kornilov's office was through a double door at the end of the corridor. Although bigger than Grushko's office it was also gloomier, with only a small desk lamp to lighten the almost sepulchral darkness.

A smart fountain-pen in his bony hand, Kornilov sat behind a big leather-topped desk. Another desk had been set at right angles to Kornilov's, making a T shape, and it was here we seated ourselves while the general finished writing the memo in his best copperplate.

In his late fifties, Kornilov was a stern-looking figure with cold, fossilised eyes and a hard, expressionless face like some long-lost funerary mask of beaten bronze. Looking at him it was hard to believe Grushko's assertion that the general had been a committed democrat long before the overthrow of the Party. Kornilov seemed to have been pressed from the same mould that Stalin had used to manufacture murderers like Yezhov, Yagoda and Laventri Beria. Perhaps it was just because I had known him a little while longer, but while he introduced me, Grushko became an altogether warmer, more human figure than his gnomic boss. The general nodded sombrely and shook my hand.

Glad to have you aboard,' he said with a voice that matched his office. It's a pretty good team you'll be working with. And you can bet you'll be busy. Right now there are over two hundred armed Mafia gangs operating in this city. Organised crime constitutes the biggest single threat to this country's democratic future.'

It sounded like something he had been rehearsing for the television cameras, only there was no complementary smile such as might have pleased some public relations man. Kornilov blinked slowly and lit a hand-rolled cigarette.

Yevgeni,' he said, at this moment, about how many cases are you investigating?'

About thirty, sir.'

I'm not suggesting for a moment that you drop any of them. But you'd better make solving Milyukin's murder your number-one priority. He had a lot of friends in the Western press and naturally his death will be reported there. It would look good if we could clear this matter up as quickly as possible.'

Yes, sir.' Grushko fumbled a cigarette out of his own pocket.

I've been speaking to Georgi Zverkov,' said Kornilov.

That vulture,' muttered Grushko.

Nevertheless, quite a useful one when it results in us receiving some information from the public. I want you to go on his television show and talk about Milyukin's murder. Appeal for information. I'm sure you know the drill. Just don't let him make a quilt with you.'

Grushko nodded uncomfortably.

So what do we know about this Georgian?'

He was from Svaneti,' said Grushko. It's a mountainous part of Georgia and the people there are pretty primitive. But tough too. Vaja's hometown, Ushghooli, means heart without feara__. I rang the head of Criminal Service in Tblisi but you know what they're like, sir. They're not much inclined to be helpful these days, so it's hard to say what Vaja got up to when he stayed at home.'

Georgians,' Kornilov shook his head and muttered a curse. Too busy killing each other, I suppose.'

Looks like it, sir,' said Grushko. Here Vaja had a number of convictions for theft and assault. Small stuff, really, and all of it quite a few years ago. We knew he was one of the Georgian team leaders but we were never able to sew a case on him. I've spoken to my usual informers but there's not much that's coming down about this one.' He lit the cigarette and left it hanging on his lip. I dunno. Maybe his Mafia pals thought he was planning to sell Milyukin a story.'

Kornilov's brow wrinkled as he considered Grushko's suggestion.

That's what someone wants us to think anyway,' added Grushko. Or else why the dental work? It could be that this was just some bad blood and that Milyukin was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Stranger things have happened, sir.'

All right, Yevgeni,' said Kornilov. But just suppose for one minute that it wasn't the Georgians. Who would you want to consider?'

Grushko's speculation began with a shrug. The Abkhazians maybe. Not that they're very well-organised at the moment, not since we cracked that taxi-driver racket. Then there's the Chechens. Nobody hates the Georgians more than their Muslim neighbours. This could be the start of another Mafia war.'

Let's hope not. But assuming that the Chechens wouldn't need much of a reason to kill a Georgian, what could they have against Mikhail Milyukin?'

Grushko opened the file he had brought with him and took out some papers and a photograph.

I had a look through my files for people who might have a grudge against Milyukin, and oddly enough this character here's a Chechen.' He handed Kornilov the picture.

His name is Sultan Khadziyev. About five years ago, before the Organised Crime Unit even existed, Sultan was controlling most of the prostitution north of the River Neva. Representing himself as a puppeteer how about that? he obtained permission to go to Hungary with five female assistants. Only they were hard-currency prostitutes who thought their pimp was taking them for a well-earned holiday. When they arrived in Budapest, Sultan got himself a flat and put the girls to work.

But the profits weren't as good as he had hoped for and so after a couple of months Sultan sold the girls and the flat to the Hungarian Mafia and came home. Well, I don't know what kind of girls they were, but the Hungarians couldn't make a go of them either and so they took the girls to Bucharest and sold them to the Romanian Mafia.

Finally the girls saved enough money to escape back to Peter where they took their story to Mikhail Milyukin. He did a big article about them in Ogonyok and persuaded the girls to speak to us and give evidence against Sultan. Along the way Sultan kidnapped one of the girls and half-buried her alive to stop her talking, but Milyukin managed to get the rest of the girls to stand firm.'

A real citizen, this animal,' said Kornilov, looking at the photograph.

We fixed him a holiday of his own,' said Grushko. A ten-year stretch in Perm.'

A spell in a labour camp would be enough reason to kill a man. But if this character's still in the zone as you say.'

These Chechens stick pretty close, sir,' Grushko explained. Maybe one of Sultan's friends killed Milyukin. Maybe they wrote him a fan letter as well. You know, from what I've seen the man got more hate mail than Rasputin.'

Look on the bright side, Yevgeni,' said Kornilov. Food may be in short supply. But at least you'll have no shortage of suspects.'

6

I spent the evening at the Big House, reading Milyukin's hate mail with Grushko and Nikolai. Having divided the pile of letters into three we sat around Grushko's desk and, fortified by a steady supply of coffee, cigarettes and a considerable quantity of dried bread crusts which Grushko kept in his cupboard, we applied ourselves to this distasteful task. Mostly we read in silence but occasionally one of us would read aloud from some particularly venomous letter. In truth there were none of them that threw up any definite leads. But by the end of that night I think we all found that our admiration of Mikhail Milyukin had grown considerably and, as a corollary, this increased our determination to catch his killers. None more so than Grushko himself. I don't recall every letter that Grushko or Nikolai chose to quote from. However the following five seemed to me to be typically unpleasant as well as indicative of the lamentable state in which the country found itself.

Dear Mikhail Mikhailovich,

Your patronymic would seem to indicate that you knew who your father was, although I find that very hard to believe, you intellectual bastard. You write about a drug problem among young people today as if there was someone forcing us to sit on a needle. But this is nonsense. Like most of my friends I enjoy swallowing a rope. Heroin, methadone, wheels, hot-water bottle it's all the same to us what we use. Frankly, we don't much care as long as we can blow our minds free of all that shit we learned in school. You ask what we can possibly believe in. Psychobilly music, that's what. It really helps you get out of your head. And talking of that, let me tell you. the next time I see your stupid face in the Leningrad Rock Club, I'll cut your ears off and spit in your skull. I'm serious. I've a good sharp knife and nothing would give me more pleasure than to stick it in your eye.

Dear Mikhail Milyukin,

Your essay in Ogonyok on alcoholism in St Petersburg was a typical example of the kind of journalism that makes this great country of ours an international laughing-stock. Bug spray in a bottle of beer! Shoe polish on a slice of bread! Boiling a wooden table leg with sugar! If nothing else your damnable piece must have served to give drunkards more ideas on how to get drunk. And you have the temerity to blame all of this illicit drinking on Comrade Andropov's anti-alcohol campaign. Why must we wash our dirty linen in public like this? I used to think you were a responsible man, but now I look forward to the day when the forces of law and order return to this country and sweep you and all your dirty kind back into the labour camps where you belong. And when that time comes the bullet you receive in the back of your stupid skull will be less than you deserve. I pray that your grave is marked only with the stool of the man who shoots you.

Comrade Milyukin,

In your recent article in Krokodil magazine, you compared St Petersburg's murder rate to that of New York. But this is rubbish. It is nothing like as great. Anyway, who really cares? Mostly it's the people from the swamps, the darkies from the southern republics, who are killing each other, for drugs, or for hard currency. No one misses scum like that. Except you, perhaps, you mealy-mouthed liberal. Let me tell you I didn't fight in Afghanistan and come home to get soft with criminals. There should be only one sentence for these people: death. I myself have shot lots of these animals to spare the courts the trouble. But it now occurs to me that the country would be equally well served if we sent a few of you so-called special correspondents the same way. So you know what? I'm going to track you down you bastard. And when I do I'm going to turn you into one of your own statistics. Depend on it. A patriot

Comrade Milyukin,

Do you know the Dieta supermarket, near Mayakovsky Square in Moscow? This morning I went to the meat counter and they were selling mortadella sausage at 168 roubles a kilo. My husband is a schoolteacher. He earns 500 roubles a month. So I ask you: how can we afford prices like this? I ended up buying ten eggs, and they cost me almost 18 roubles. Only a few months ago they would have cost me less than 2 roubles. My point is this: you have the nerve to tell me that things are better now. Well, let me tell you, your new democracy has destroyed the old economic system but you haven't introduced anything to replace it. How I wish Stalin was still alive and you and all your fellow democrats were forced to spend your time working on a collective farm. Better still, I think a few years in Solovki would do you a world of good.

Mikhail Milyukin,

Your piece about St Petersburg's Cosa Nostra' was one of the most stupid, misleading piles of shit I have ever heard anyone gob out on national television. There is no such thing as the Russian Mafia'. The whole idea of a Mafia has been made up by people like you who try and make money out of selling scare stories. There are just businessmen providing people with what they want and, just as often, with what they need the things you can't buy in the state shops. Our business methods have to be ruthless sometimes if only because in this stupid, backward country of ours there exists no understanding of supply and demand and free enterprise. If someone lets you down in business there is no real legal mechanism to enforce a contract or to have him pay compensation. So we break his legs, or threaten his children. Next time he'll do what he's supposed to. A man doesn't pay a share of his profits to his partners, we'll burn his house to the ground. This is just business. You are an intelligent man. You should understand this. And yet you continue to sell us the dead horse about the Mafia. A number of my business colleagues are very angry about this. They feel that the opportunity cost us by your continuing to peddle this kind of garbage is too high. So a word of warning. Stop it now. Because the next time you choose to describe joint ventures, traders, private businessmen, cooperatives as Mafia-run, you might not live to regret it. You will perhaps be interested to note that due to the large number of men leaving the military the price of a gun is actually coming down at a time when every other kind of price is going up. Think about it.

Ten o'clock,' said Grushko when the last letter had been read. Yawning, he stood up and went over to the window. The sky was still as bright as day and would remain so for several hours yet. During the month of June it is actually dark for less than an hour.

I usually look forward to this time of year,' he said. The churki don't much like the lighter evenings. More chance of being nicked, I suppose.' He shook his head wearily. I don't know. Maybe I'm just getting old. But when someone like Mikhail Milyukin gets his box, then I begin to think that whoever did it, well, they must think their chances of getting away with it are good. I mean, they must have known that we'd pull all the stops out. And still they went ahead and did it. It makes me think that they just don't care. That they don't expect to get caught. That they're laughing at us. It's. it's depressing.' He turned and looked at us with a frustrated sort of look.

I shrugged. Being a policeman isn't so bad. Things might be worse. You could have been a cosmonaut.'

Nikolai grunted his assent.

These former heroes were now a cruel national joke: most of them had Alzheimer's disease from useless endurance experiments in poorly shielded Soviet space stations. I thought of another equally tasteless joke that was popular in Moscow at the time.

Why do policemen have dogs? Because they need someone to do the paperwork.'

This time Nikolai guffawed loudly. That's a good one,' he said, slapping his huge thigh.

Grushko smiled, shook his head and lit a cigarette. You should have been a comedian,' he said.

True, I said, 'but my mother says I did the next best thing.

Your mother too, eh?' chuckled Nikolai.

Grushko was looking at his watch.

I think we'll call this a day.' He collected his jacket off the back of his chair. Where does your brother-in-law live?'

Ochtinsky Prospekt.'

You're in luck, comedian. That's where I live. Come on, I'll give you a lift.'

We said good night to Nikolai, who said he had some paperwork he wanted to finish.

Unfortunately I don't have a dog,' he grinned. See you tomorrow.'

On the way downstairs to the car Grushko spoke some more about the letters we had read.

For the Russian writer the real hallmark of his success has always been the number of enemies he makes. Don't you agree?'

By that standard Mikhail Milyukin must have been a very successful writer indeed,' I said.

Grushko nodded grimly.

By that standard he ought to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature.'

We came out of the Big House and stood in front of the huge wooden doors for a moment, enjoying the summer air. A man walking past eyed us nervously and then quickened his step. It was not the kind of place you lingered near. Grushko's eyes followed the man suspiciously.

We might make a bigger impact if people weren't still so damned nervous of us,' he grumbled.

That, I said, 'is going to take a little while.

I suppose so.' Grushko lit a cigarette. His gold lighter flashed in his hand and I found myself again wondering about the generosity of Swiss policemen. What could he possibly have done for them that would have been rewarded with such a generous gift? Or were the Swiss police just so well paid? Nobody would have been dumb enough to flaunt a gold lighter if it had been come by dishonestly. Grushko caught my eye and seemed to sense my curiosity. Maybe he could read palms after all.

One night I was at home and I got a call from this militiaman at the Moskow,' he explained. We went down the steps and along the pavement. The Swiss police had got themselves into a bit of bother. Some girls had joined them for dinner and they'd helped them spend quite a bit of money well, by our standards. There were empty bottles of champagne all over the table. Anyway, at the end of the evening the girls, who were hard-currency prostitutes you understand, put it to the Swiss that they should all go upstairs. Only the Swiss thought better of it. But the girls felt that they had wasted a whole evening on them without result: I mean, what's a free dinner next to a hundred dollars, right? So they told the Swiss that they were working girls who needed the money and expected to be paid for their company. There's nothing more rapacious than a Russian whore. But the Swiss disagreed and so the girls called their pimp in to try and settle the dispute. One of the Swiss persuaded a militiaman to give me a call and I had to go and sort it out. I had the militiamen throw the girls in the hotel cage and threatened to pinch the pimp.' He pocketed the lighter. So now you know how I came to own this cigarette lighter.' His tone was defensive.

I shrugged. I'm sure it's none of my business.'

Just as you like,' said Grushko.

We found Grushko's car and drove north, across the Neva. Where the reddening sun touched the shiny graphite surface of the river it looked as if someone had washed a murderous, bloody axe in the water.

Ochtinsky Prospekt, in the east of St Petersburg, was exactly like the place where I had lived in east Moscow. Exactly like any big housing estate in Russia, now that I come to think of it. Once, when I was returning from a holiday in the Crimea, I saw my home from the air. It was as if a giant had gone to buy some shoes and tried on every pair in the shop. (This could not have been a Russian shop.) In her concern to make a sale (this could certainly never have been a Russian shop), the assistant had thrown the white boxes all over the place until the floor was littered with them. That was what my home looked like from the air. Something that had been dropped there, randomly, without any thought. Quite unreal.

Inside one of the boxes, each of them twelve storeys high and housing as many as five hundred families, life was only too concrete, however. At Number seven Sredne-Ochtinsky, where Porfiry Zakharych Lebezyatnikov lived with his wife and child, human habitation was all too substantive. It was not that the walls were too thin to keep out the noise made by the family living next door to my brother-in-law; nor was it that the rooms squeezed between the walls were too small. No more was it that the tiny, creaking lift smelt like a urinal; nor the lack of light-bulbs that made the passageways dangerous at night. It was not the very homogeneity of the landscape that could be viewed from the window-box which Porfiry laughingly called a balcony. But rather it was all these things that, when taken together, contrived to make the inhabitant feel like a rat in a very large and dirty nest.

I was used to feeling like a rat in my particular line of work.

As one of them who can go abroad', Porfiry Zakharych was better off than most. Frequent business trips to Stockholm, Helsinki and, once, to London on behalf of his employer, the Baltic Shipping Company, had enabled him to acquire all the luxury consumer goods and the hard currency you needed to live well.

I call him my brother-in-law, but he and my sister had divorced long ago because of her alcoholism, and this was the first time I had met his new wife, Katerina. She was a striking looking woman with a dark, slightly oriental face and the most perfectly formed breasts I had ever seen. With breasts such as these it was hard not to gain the impression that they were the main reason why Porfiry had married her. She wore a low-cut top that looked as if it had been sculpted for her, and a necklace that was made of coral.

Porfiry was less than distinguished. Older than Katerina by at least ten years, he was grey-haired and slightly overweight, with a bad, pitted skin that here and there had erupted in various moles and cysts, not the least of which was a stamp-sized purple birthmark on the side of his fleshy neck. He greeted me with a warm hug and a kiss on both cheeks.

So,' he said, here you are at last. Tell me, what do you think of Katya? Isn't she gorgeous?'

Stop it, Porfiry,' she giggled, colouring with embarrassment.

She certainly is,' I said, without any false politeness.

And what about our apartment?' he continued.

I looked around. It's very comfortable,' I said.

Porfiry pointed to a handsome wood cabinet that contained an enormous colour television and VCR.

Finnish,' he said proudly. We've got satellite, too.'

He demonstrated the variety of channels that were available with a remote control that was the size of a small computer.

After Porfiry had shown me his computer, the microwave oven, the stereo music centre, his new camera, and demonstrated how to operate the gas water-heater system in the kitchen, he introduced his dog, Mikki, an enormous bull-terrier, while Katerina made me a bowl of semolina. After I had eaten this we all toasted one another's health with some Georgian brandy that helped to take away the taste of the semolina.

When we had exchanged all our news, I told them about the murder of Mikhail Milyukin and they said that it had been reported on the television evening news.

The reporter said that the militia think that it's the work of the Mafia,' said Katerina.

It certainly looks that way,' I allowed. They had more than enough reason.'

And what does the great Grushko think?' asked Porfiry.

You know Grushko?'

No, not personally. But he's often on television talking about some crime or another.'

There's a lot of crime here these days,' said Katerina. You're afraid to go out. That's why Porfiry got Mikki. To protect me when he's away on business.'

Or hunting,' added Porfiry. We'll go hunting soon, eh?'

Great,' I said. If I can get any time off. Milyukin's murder has really made things rather busy for us.' I finished my glass of brandy and let Porfiry help me to some more. Besides, I'm supposed to find out how Grushko does things.'

Porfiry shrugged. Even if you catch the ones who did it,' he said, we'll never defeat the Mafia. You know that, don't you?'

Why do you say that?'

Because it's the one thing in this country that actually works.'

7

The next day I was due at the State Prosecutor's Office and so Porfiry, whose journey to his offices in the passenger seaport took him in that general direction, gave me a lift in his car. This was a bright red new Zhiguli and Porfiry was as proud of it as he was of all his other toys. All the way across the city he talked about how he had driven it into the country from Helsinki, and I was quite glad to get out by the time we got to Yakubovica Street.

The State Prosecutor's Office was a decrepit building much like the one I inhabited on Kalayeva Street, with the same green walls, the same ancient lift and the same sour-piss smell. Vladimir Voznosensky's box of an office was on the second floor and he shared it with a broken microwave oven, several tonnes of papers and an ancient army carbine with which he claimed he went hunting, although I could not imagine that it could ever have fired. Voznosensky, a slight, fair-haired figure with a flourishing moustache and a cardigan that, despite the warm weather, he wore zipped up to the neck, greeted me cordially.

I prosecute most of the cases involving organised crime in this city,' he told me. So I guess we'll be seeing a lot of each other. It's a difficult business. And it's not made any easier by the fact that my predecessor is now Petersburg's number-one Mafioso lawyer.'

Luzhin? He used to work here?'

I see Grushko's already told you about him,' said Voznosensky. Yes, Semyon Sergeyevich Luzhin was assistant state prosecutor in Leningrad for five years. Now he makes his old monthly salary in one hour. And he's not the only one to have left this place to go and work for the other side.' He shrugged and lit a pipe. Everything comes down to money these days, doesn't it?

Another thing: when you do make an arrest, what you'll always find is that your Mafioso will claim that whatever it is he's supposed to have done was a personal matter. He'll deny membership of any gang. He's killed another gangster? It was an argument they had about a girl, or an old gambling debt, or an insult received. A Mafia killing? No way. He's never heard of the Russian Mafia: he thought that was something the Party invented to try and discredit capitalism and the free market.

But our biggest problem is still with the intimidation of witnesses.'

I nodded. It's the same in Moscow,' I said. We've been trying to set up a witness-protection programme, but of course there's not enough money to make it work. And nothing's going to improve until we've changed the way we try racketeering cases in the courts. We need a proper jury system, with jurors compensated for taking time off work. Nobody wants to serve on a jury and get paid nothing.'

Nobody does something for nothing these days.'

Unless you're a policeman,' I suggested provocatively.

Don't you believe it,' said Voznosensky. There are plenty with their paws out for what's available. It's the Mafia's biggest expense. That and weapons.'

What's that? Mostly military stuff for hard currency?'

He nodded. And it's all top quality, too. There's enough military hardware on the streets of this city to fight a war.'

Tell me, do you get much interference from the military prosecutor?

More and more.' He uttered a scornful sort of laugh. Prosecution is the one area of military life that is actually expanding.'

He made tea and we talked some more: lawyer's talk, about protocols, evidence, who the best judges were and the latest crime figures.

So, tell me about Grushko,' I said after a while. What kind of a man is he?'

Worked his way up through the ranks. The militia's been his life. And never a breath of scandal. Grushko believes in what he's doing. Things are black and white with him.' Voznosensky shrugged and tapped his forehead. To that extent he's like a typical Stalinist. You know a bit rigid and inflexible sometimes.

Of course, politically, he couldn't be more different. Stuck his neck out when it was still dangerous to do it, especially for a militiaman. It's a story worth hearing. A couple of years ago, Grushko was selected as the Central Board of Leningrad's delegate to the 22nd Party Congress. He announced his resignation from the Party while making a speech from the lectern. It caused quite a stink at the time, I can tell you. After that about half of the detectives and investigators in the Central Board left the Party, including General Kornilov. These days it's split pretty evenly down the middle between those who support Yeltsin and those who support the old Party. That's your Grushko.'

What about at home?'

He lives quite modestly really. He's married, with a daughter who's the apple of his eye. Any spare money he's ever had he spent putting his daughter through med. school. She's now a doctor at one of the big hospitals here in Peter.'

A sociable man, would you say? I only ask because I don't want to be a nuisance to him if I can help it. But if he's the affable type then it won't matter.'

I wouldn't call Grushko sociable, no. But he's straight with you. He likes a drink and although I've seen him drink a lot I've never yet seen him drunk. Oh yes, and Pasternak: he loves Pasternak.'

At the Big House Grushko was not to be found. Nor were Nikolai and Sasha. In the office they shared with two other detectives I found a younger officer, working his way through Mikhail Milyukin's Filofax, telephoning every name and number that was written there. Replacing the phone he stood up and introduced himself.

Lieutenant Andrei Petrov, sir,' he said, shaking my hand. Better dressed than most of the men working for Grushko, Petrov was another of these blond-haired northern Russians. And this ' he nodded across the desk at a man who was playing idly with an automatic. The man stood up and extended me his hand this is Lieutenant Alek Svridigailov one of your investigators.'

Pleased to meet you, Lieutenant.'

Svridigailov was smaller than Petrov and as wiry as a pipe-cleaner. He had the lugubrious face of an undernourished bloodhound.

Glock semi-automatic,' he said, explaining the gun. Made in Austria. Fires thirteen rounds of .45 ACP-calibre ammunition. Better than anything we've got. You see, there are only thirty-five parts. A real quality weapon. I'd love a gun like this. They took it off some Yakut hood. Can you believe that? You wouldn't think one of those bastards would be intelligent enough to get himself a gun like this, would you?'

Andrei Petrov chuckled. You know what they say about those Yakuts? The only reason they don't eat cucumbers is because they can't get their heads in the jars.'

Svridigailov looked at Andrei and then back at me, shaking his head as if to apologise for his colleague.

Grushko's gone to the TV station,' Andrei explained. He's recording Georgi Zverkov's show. And as for Nikolai and Sasha' He frowned as he tried to remember where they had gone.

I sat down at Nikolai's desk and glanced over what was on it.

Doesn't he keep a diary?' I asked. It occurred to me that I might make a note of some of Nikolai's contacts.

Andrei nodded at the safe beside Nikolai's desk.

I expect he's got it locked up,' he said.

I remember,' said Svridigailov. They went to the Pribaltskaya Hotel. To see some Georgians.'

Opened for the 1980 Olympic Games, the Pribaltskaya Hotel stands on the western edge of Vasilyevsky Island, looking out across the Bay of Finland. Triptych-shaped, with seventeen floors and 1,200 rooms, it is one of the biggest hotels in the city and although the citizens of St Petersburg were forbidden to use it, the hotel's swimming pool, sauna, bowling alley, gymnasium and massage parlour not to mention the five bars, the five restaurants and the fifteen coffee shops made it very popular with some of the more nefarious elements of local society. The methods of the Mafia required strong arms to implement them and, like most racketeers, the Georgians liked to work out and use the weights at least once a day. From years of strict regime in the zone, many of them had physiques that would have been the envy of any Olympic athlete, and in their expensive designer track-suits and gold necklaces they would have been easily distinguished from any other people who dared to use the gym at the same time. The gang leader was a swarthy-faced tough called Dzhumber Gankrelidze and he and his lieutenant, Oocho, seemed to be wearing more gold than the rest of the gang put together. These two were among those exercising in the Pribaltskaya gym with a couple of heavies watching the door when Nikolai and Sasha presented their IDs.

It's all right,' said Dzhumber, wiping his hairy neck with a towel. I think these dogs are here to bark, not bite.'

Nikolai pushed the man obstructing his path to one side.

Who's he? Your secretary?'

Dzhumber Gankrelidze grinned, showing off a status-enhancing gold tooth.

Yeah,' he said, I get him to take some dictation now and again.'

Oocho laughed and continued to work on his grapefruit-sized biceps.

I bet you do,' said Nikolai. What's his shorthand? Twenty rounds a minute?'

You're good,' said Gankrelidze smiling. You should be in the cabaret upstairs.'

I'm fussy about who I entertain,' said Nikolai.

Gankrelidze kept on smiling. He was used to police harassment. Sasha dipped his head to read the label on one of the Georgians' track-suits.

Sergio Tacchini,' he said. Very nice. Quite the lifestyle you boys have here.'

You know what they say,' said Oocho. He who sits near the pot eats the most kasha.'

I guess you're sitting close enough at that,' Nikolai observed. All those cash-cows in the lobby. Business looks pretty good.'

Pick a girl and tell her I sent you,' Gankrelidze said nonchalantly. It'll be my little treat. Your friend too. I like to see the militia enjoying themselves.'

That's the thing I like about you Georgians,' said Nikolai. You're very generous with your mothers and your sisters.'

Gankrelidze stopped smiling and picked up a dumbbell. He began to pull it towards his big shoulder.

What do you want?' he said evenly.

I've got Georgia on my mind,' said Nikolai. Specifically the late Vaja Ordzhonikidze. Let's start with where you all were the night before last. And don't blow me any smoke rings either. Not five copecks'-worth. You don't have to work for Russian intelligence to decode the way Vaja took his wooden pea-jacket. Someone thought he was a pincher.

Gankrelidze dropped the weight on to the mat and stood up. He was strong, but shorter than Nikolai by about a head.

You know, normally I don't talk to strangers. But youyou've got a kind face. Me and the boys here spent the whole evening in the restaurant upstairs. Isn't that so, boys?'

There was a murmur of general agreement.

You don't believe me, you ask your dogs on the front door. They saw us when we arrived at about eight; and when we left again around three.'

No doubt they've had their paws well stroked,' sniffed Nikolai.

Oocho laughed and shook his head. Yeah, well, you hear all sorts of terrible rumours about this city's militia.'

The rest of the gang thought that this was very funny.

So how about this rumour that Vaja was a pincher?' said Nikolai. That it was his own side that killed him: because he was an informant for Mikhail Milyukin.'

There are people who drink their own urine,' said Gankrelidze, and people who put hot jars on their backs, because they think that it's good for them. But that doesn't make it true. You're looking at the wrong cat, my friend.'

Gankrelidze picked up his towel and wiped his face.

I tell you what I'll do,' he said. I'll give you an invitation to Vaja's funeral. We're giving him a real Georgian send-off. Now does that sound like we thought he was a pincher?'

Nikolai lit a cigarette as he considered Gankrelidze's argument for a moment.

Did Vaja like watches?'

He appreciated the value of punctuality, if that's what you mean. What are you aiming at?'

Only this: someone baited a trap for him with an expensive watch.' Nikolai picked up a medicine ball and began to roll it in his dinner-plate-sized hands.

Gankrelidze tut-tutted.

Good taste. It can be a curse.'

I don't suppose you've any idea who that might have been?'

You're the local melody, you tell me. I'm just a citizen.'

Sure, you're a citizen,' said Nikolai. And I'm the Grand Duchess Anastasia.'

And then we left,' he said and unlocked the safe by his desk. He placed his holstered gun inside, took out his diary and locked the safe again.

What do you think?' I asked. Would they really execute one of their own and then give him a Mafia funeral with all the trimmings?'

If it was good for business they'd give the Patriarch a Mafioso's send-off,' declared Sasha. These bastards like to think that they're men of honour, but that's only because they've seen Al Pacino in The Godfather. In reality they've got no more respect or honour than a hungry pig.

It's true,' said Nikolai. They watch that video over and over again. It's like a training film for them. I wish I had ten roubles for every churki who thinks he's Michael Corleone.

The big man's phone rang. He took the call and then asked me if I remembered the man who owned the restaurant that had been firebombed.

Chazov, wasn't it?' I said. You were hoping to jog his memory?'

Care to sit in?'

We spent a fruitless afternoon with Chazov, who was still too scared of the Mafia to add anything to his original statement. When Nikolai explained that there would be an official investigation into the origin of his meat supplies, Chazov assured him that he had bought it in good faith from a legitimate supplier, although he was unable, or unwilling, to name him. To Nikolai's final tactic, that he intended to find out whether or not the meat had been stolen from the state meat markets, contrary to Article 92 of the RSFSR Criminal Code, an offence punishable by up to four years' deprivation of freedom or corrective labour, Chazov answered with a shrug only. And after he had gone Nikolai banged the table in the interview room with the flat of his hand.

He knows I've got nothing,' he growled. If I had the first shred of evidence that the meat was stolen I'd have had it impounded and him charged. But how can I ask for a protocol purely on the basis that the very quantity of it makes the supply suspicious? He knows that.'

He hit the table again and I didn't fancy the idea of him ever hitting me.

But I'm not finished with him. I'll keep having him back here until he's so sick of the sight of me, he'll be begging to tell me who's putting the squeeze on him.'

I had no doubt that he meant every word of it.

8

Peter the Great built St Petersburg as Russia's window on the West. That was before television. Television is today's window on the West. Not that there's much worth watching, unless you like Brazilian soap operas. Which is why so many people beg, steal and borrow to own a video-cassette recorder.

St Petersburg Television, broadcasting to over 70 million people, from the Baltic to as far away as Siberia, remained the exception to the state's continuing broadcasting monopoly. A mouthpiece for opinions quite different from those expressed on national television, it had long been a hotbed of the new democracy. The studios of St Petersburg Television were located on Petrogradsky Island, near the top of Kirov Prospekt and easy enough for Grushko to find since they were distinguished by an enormous transmitter-mast that soared over the Neva like a smaller version of the Eiffel Tower.

A middle-aged balding man, wearing his tie askew and his sleeves rolled up, greeted Grushko in his office.

Yuri Petrakov,' he said, introducing himself. I was Mikhail's producer on Sixty Minutes.'

We're speaking to everyone who worked with him,' explained Grushko, sitting down, in the hope that we might find out if he was working on anything that might have got him killed.'

Petrakov lit a cigarette and nodded attentively.

I've already telephoned Mikhail Mikhailovich's editors at Krokodil and Ogonyok in Moscow. But since I was coming here anyway I thought I'd speak to you in person, Mr Petrakov. Did you know him very well?'

Yes, I did. He was one of our finest journalists, and I don't just mean here on Petersburg TV. He was one of the country's finest journalists. The Golden Calf Literary Award, the Ilf and Petrov Prize for Satirical Journalism, Journalist of the Year two years running. There has never been anyone quite like Mikhail. Not in Russia, anyway. It was no surprise to me to learn that he had been lured away by national television.'

He was leaving the station?'

Yes. He told me himself exactly a week before he was murdered. Well, of course he was only ever a freelance. As you know he had other commitments besides us. But they wanted him and were prepared to pay handsomely to get him. More than we could afford, anyway. We are not as well off as they are, colonel. In fact we're losing money. Our major source of funds remains the state budget. I dare say we'll end up as part of the great Russian broadcasting company. They already own a fifth of our equipment and technology.' He shook his head. But here, you don't want to hear about our problems, do you?'

Was there any resentment at Mikhail leaving?'

Some. But not from anyone who knew him. Mikhail wasn't a wealthy man at all. Some people imagined that because he was famous he was rich. It simply wasn't true. Mikhail wasn't very good with money. He was never paid well for what he did. So I didn't blame him at all for wanting to leave. And of course he wasn't the first person to be enticed away. Bella Kurkova went last year. I don't suppose they'll waste any time in looking for someone to replace him.'

Do you know what they wanted him to do?'

The same thing as for us: make five or six documentaries a year.' He shrugged. To tell the truth, as he saw it. I guess that's why he was killed. I'm not sure they would really have known how to handle a man like Mikhail. There was never much editorial control from me. Mikhail liked to do his own thing, and sometimes that meant upsetting people.'

Yes,' said Grushko. I've already seen a sample of the kind of fan mail he received. Was the day he told you he was leaving the last time you spoke to him?'

I think it was, yes. Under the terms of our original agreement he had one film left to do for us and so we also talked over an idea he had for another film about hard-currency prostitutes.'

The phone rang. Petrakov stubbed out his cigarette and answered the call. Then he replaced the receiver without speaking.

That was Zverkov. You're to go down to make-up in ten minutes. I'll show you the way when it's time.'

This film about hard-currency prostitutes, said Grushko. 'Did he mention a Mafia connection? The Georgians?

If he did I doubt it would have registered,' said Petrakov, lighting another cigarette. Mikhail got to be a bit of a bore about the Mafia sometimes. Well, to be quite frank with you, he was obsessed with it. He saw the Mafia everywhere, in everything.'

Grushko was half inclined to say that he agreed with that assessment. Instead he reminded Petrakov that the Mafia had threatened Milyukin's life on a number of occasions.

I'm afraid that's just an occupational hazard for any journalist, Colonel,' shrugged Petrakov. Especially in Russia. About the only thing that isn't rationed these days is stupidity.'

Would you have known if he was ever scared by one threat in particular?'

No. And I think he took them all quite seriously. At least to the extent of taking taxis instead of public transport.' Petrakov laughed. Always allowing for the vagaries of Petersburg taxi-drivers. That's why he never had any money.'

He frowned as his lips tugged at his cigarette. But you know, now I come to think of it, I do remember him being quite agitated by something. I don't know that you would call it a threat exactly.

Oh? What was that?'

He found out that his phone was being bugged.'

Bugged? By who?'

The KGB, Colonel. Or the Russian Security Service, or whatever it is that the Department is calling itself these days. Who else?' He grinned at Grushko as if he didn't quite believe that the detective could not have known about it.

You look surprised,' he said. I would have thought.'

Grushko shook his head irritably. He hated it when people assumed that the Central Board was still party to the Department's dirty tricks.

How did he know he was being bugged?'

Well, I think he was able to guess. I mean, they're hardly very subtle about it. Clicks on the line and all that kind of thing.'

But why?'

The Department is reformed only of its Communists, not its anti-Semites. There are factions in the KGB who would like to see every Jew in Russia on a plane to Israel.

And that's why Mikhail Mikhailovich thought that they were operating a surveillance?'

Yes.'

I didn't even know that he was Jewish.'

Oh, Milyukin wasn't his real name. His real name was Berdichevksi. When he came to live in Leningrad, in 1979, he changed it to avoid discrimination. It was hard for a Jew to write anything then. The Russian press especially the Russian Literary Gazette is still quite anti-Semitic. Even now, more than ten years later. They're even saying that Lenin was a Jew. Or don't you notice these things?'

I notice them.'

And?'

Grushko shrugged. This is Russia. This is the home of conspiracy theories. He didn't much like being pressed for his opinion. He felt he knew what was right and what was wrong but that it was a matter between himself and his own conscience. He concealed his irritated frown with a strong-tasting puff on the last millimetre of his cigarette.

How well do you know Mrs Milyukin?' he asked.

Hardly at all. Why?'

Oh, I was just wondering why she didn't think to tell me any of this herself.' He shook his head. The last puff had been stronger than he had expected. It's sad, really. When I read his letters last night I thought I'd encountered just about every possible shade of hatred for the man. And now I find one, in my own backyard, that I didn't even know about: the Department.'

Petrakov raised his toothbrush-shaped eyebrows.

Yes, well, while you're busy compiling a grudge list against Mikhail, don't forget the army. His early stand against the war in Afghanistan won him a lot of enemies. A lot of friends too, it's fair to say. But nobody ever hunts you down just to shake you by the hand and clap you on the back. Not in Russia.'

He glanced at his watch and stood up. We'd better go,' he said.

Grushko followed Petrakov out of the door.

When the make-up people had done their best to soften Grushko's fist of a face, he waited in the hospitality suite until Zverkov came to talk to him.

He was a handsome man in an unshaven, macho sort of way and, wearing a smart leather jacket and a pair of jeans, he looked like nothing so much as one of the businessmen' who might have been found over at Deviatkino Market. But worse than this Zverkov was also arrogant in the way that only so-called creative people' can be. If he had been Nijinsky he could not have thought more of himself. He did not offer to shake Grushko's hand and the studio's hospitality only ran as far as a glass of tea. Zverkov was of the opinion that the militia needed his programme more than he needed the militia.

It had not always been that way. It had been Grushko who first asked Zverkov to film at the scene of a crime in the hope of soliciting information from the public. He had hardly realised that this would be the basis on which Zverkov would create a whole style of television journalism. Most commonly this involved getting as close to the perpetrators and their victims as quickly as possible. Nothing was hidden from the lens of Zverkov's outside-broadcast team, with Zverkov's microphone there to record the sound of their complaints, their confessions, their cries of pain and, quite often, their last breaths as well. Realism, they called it. Pornography, some said. Either way Grushko cared even less for Zverkov's work than he did for his manners.