Ghostwritten

Petersburg

It’s a lashing bitch of a day out. Rain, rain, rain, the sky splits and spills. God almighty, give me a cigarette.

Jerome was explaining the other day that, believe it or not, glass is actually a liquid that thickens at the bottom as the years pass. Glass is a thick syrup. But you never know where you are with Jerome. Rudi said that my bottom is getting thicker as the years go past, too, and he laughed for a whole minute.

I yawn a yawn so wide that my body shudders. Nobody notices. Nobody even recognises me. If my presence intrudes on their grazing at all, they assume I’m a loin of lamb who slept her way into this meagre sinecure on a plastic chair in a tiny gallery in the Large Hermitage. I don’t mind. In fact that is precisely how I want it. I can bide my time. We have a lot of time, us Russians.

So then, ladies and gentlemen. Let us begin our safari of the commoner gallery visitors. May I first introduce the shufflers. You will observe how this tribe shuffle in packs, from picture to picture, allotting each an equal period of time. Passing by are the big game hunters, for whom only the Cézannes, the Picassos and the Monets will do. Watch out for their flashbulbs and pounce! You can fine ’em $5 — hard currency — and who’ll know a thing about it? The shamblers are less systematic. Usually lone hunters, they shamble zig-zag through the halls, pausing for a long time when something catches their eyes. Over there! See him? A peeping Tom! There! Lurking behind the pedestals. Beware, ladies! Our friends of the weaker sex are here not to observe the ladies in the gilt frames, but the ones in the black fishnets. A few of the bolder ones steal glances at me. I outstare them. Margarita Latunsky has nothing to fear from any of them. Where were we? Ah yes, the sheep. You will hear them bleating in the background, herded by their guide and being told what to admire and why. Who is he, you ask, holding forth in a loud voice about what Agnolo Bronzino really meant to say half a millennium ago in Florence? He is a lecturer, exposing his erudition like a flasher in Smolnogo Park. I’ve been accosted myself on many occasions, beside the duck pond. ‘Bit small, isn’t it?’ They wither on the vine! Back to the gallery. A few times a day we get a visit from Lord God Almighty: one of the directors, strutting about like they own the place, which I suppose in a way they do. Or they think they do. Only I, and a chosen few, know what it is that they really own. Occasionally Jerome comes in with his notebook to study the next picture, but we pretend not to notice one another. We are professionals. Lastly there are the other gallery attendants, peroxided and lank, each on a chair for their fat butts. My butt isn’t really fat by the way, I made Rudi admit he was joking. The other attendants are slags and trollops, each and every one. Cave cranny-clammy. Oh, they scowl at me, and gossip about my understanding with the Director of Acquisitions, Head Curator Rogorshev. It isn’t simply the jealousy of the jilted that makes them hate me. And I told them this. It’s the jealousy that any menopausal frump feels towards a real woman.

None of them matters. None of them. I have higher things to consider.

Yes, it’s been a cold, rainy summer in our cold, rainy city. Jerome said the only way Peter could get people to come and live in this marsh of frost and mud was to make it illegal for any builder to work anywhere else in his empire, from the Baltic to the Pacific. That, I can believe.

There’s no one in my gallery now — the marble statue of Poseidon and these five pictures are no big crowd pullers, even if one of them is a Delacroix — so I stand up and walk over to the window, to stretch my legs. You don’t think Margarita Latunsky is going to sit still for seven hours flat, do you? The cold glass kisses the tip of my nose. Wall after wall of rain, driven up the Neva from the Baltic. Past the new oil refinery built by Deutschmarks, past the docks, past the rusting naval station, past the Peter and Paul Fortress over on Zayachy Island where I first met Rudi, over the Leytenanta Schmidta bridge, where many years ago I used to drive with my politburo minister, sipping cocktails in the back of his big black Zil with the flags mounted above the headlamps. Come now, there’s no need to act surprised. Remember who I am! There was no harm done, his wife was happy enough lying on a Black Sea beach with her limpid children. She probably had young goaty Cossack masseurs queueing up to ply her below the shoulder blades.

I turn my back to all that, spinning on my heel, and do a mazurka across the slippery wooden floor. I wonder, did they do that when Empress Catherine was in charge here? I can imagine her, maybe in this very room, dancing a few steps with the young Napoleon, or cavorting with the dashing composer Tolstoy, or titillating Gingghis Khan with a glimpse of the royal calf. I feel an affinity with any woman who has powerful and violent men sucking olives from between her toes. Empress Catherine started life as a lowly outsider, too, Jerome told me. I whirl, and spin, and I remember the applause I used to get at the Pushkin Theatre.

I gaze into my next conquest. Our next conquest, I should say. Eve and the Serpent, by Delacroix. Loot brought back from Berlin in 1945. Head Curator Rogorshev was saying how the Krauts want it all back now! What a nerve! We spend forty million lives getting rid of their nasty little Nazis for them, and all we get out of it is a few oil paintings. I’ve always had a soft spot for this one. It was I who proposed Eve be our next heist. Rudi wanted to go for something bigger like an El Greco or one of the Van Goghs, but Jerome thought we shouldn’t get greedy.

‘Go on my dear,’ urges the snake. ‘Take one. Hear it? “Pluck me,” it’s saying. That big, shiny, red one. “Pluck me, pluck me now and pluck me hard.” You know you want to.’

‘But God,’ quotes Eve, putting out feelers for an agent provocateur, clever girl, ‘expressly forbids us to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge.’

‘Ah yessssss, God... But God gave us life, did he not? And God gave us desire, did he not? And God gave us taste, did he not? And who else but God made the damned apples in the first place? So what else is life for but to tassste the fruit we desire?’

Eve folds her arms head-girlishly. ‘God expressly forbade it. Adam said.’

The snake grins through his fangs, admiring Eve’s play-acting. ‘God is a nice enough chap in his way. I dare say he means well. But between me, you and the Tree of Knowledge, he is terribly insecure.’

‘Insecure? He made the entire bloody universe! He’s omnipotent.’

‘Exactly! Almost neurotic, isn’t it? All this worshipping, morning, noon, and night. It’s “Oh Praise Him, Oh Praise Him, Oh Praise the Everlassssting Lord.” I don’t call that omnipotent. I call it pathetic. Most independent authorities agree that God has never sufficiently credited the work of virtual particles in the creation of the universssse. He raises you and Adam on this diet of myths while all the really interesting information is locked up in these juicy apples. Seven days? Give me a break.’

‘Well, I see your point. But Adam will hit the frigging roof.’

‘Ah yess... your hairless, naked hubby. I saw him frolicking with a fleecy little lamb in a meadow just this morning. He looked so content. But how about you, Eve? Do you want to spend the rest of eternity noncing around with a family of docile animals and a supreme being who insists on choosing a name like “Jehovah” to keep you company? I don’t think so. Adam might be pissed off for a little while, but he’ll change his tune when I show him bronze-tipped arrows, crocodile-skin luggage and virtual-reality helmets. I think that you, Eve, are destined for higher thingsss.’

Eve looks at the apple, a big cider apple hanging in the golden afternoon. She gulps. ‘Higher things? You mean, Forbidden Knowledge?’

The snake’s tongue flickers. ‘No, Eve, my dear one. That’s just a smoke screen. What we’re really talking about here is Desire. Care for a cigarette while you think my proposal over?’

Footsteps echo down the stairs. I sit down, resuming my sentinel posture. I would die for that cigarette.

In walks Head Curator Rogorshev and the Head of Security, a troll with a face that always seems about to pop and splatter bystanders with gobbets of cranium.

‘I thought we could approach the Great Hall by way of the Delacroix. Such an underrated little treasure!’ Head Curator Rogorshev turns to me, tracing the inside of his lips with the tip of his tongue.

I simper like the virgin he likes me to be.

‘I’ll have to have all these fittings sniffed for explosives.’ The Head of Security snorts in once and out once, wiping his nose on his sleeve.

‘Whatever. I know how the French ambassador loves to point at things with his stick.’ They walk on. At the door the Head Curator turns, blows me a kiss, points to his watch and mouths ‘six o’clock’. Then he flexes his index finger like his itty-bitty hard-on.

I flash him a look that says ‘Oh yes, oh yes! Stop before I explode!’

He trots after the security man, thinking, ‘Ooh, Head Curator Rogorshev, you cunning rogue, you master of seduction, another female of the species caught in my web.’ The truth is, Head Curator Rogorshev is a master of only one thing, and that is the art of kidding himself. Look at him! That shock of shiny black hair? I glue it on myself every Monday. There will come a time, not long from now, when he will see whose web he has been stuck in during the last year. And so will the Serious Crime Police Squad.

My birthday is coming soon. Another one. That explains why Rudi has been too busy to see me recently. He knows how I love surprises.

Gutbucket Petrovich comes to take my place while I go for a tea-break. They dropped me off the rota once, and left me sitting in my gallery for a whole day. I made Rogorshev sack the ringleader. None of them ever speaks to me now, but they never forget my tea-break.

The staff canteen is empty. The catering workers have already gone home by the time my break comes around, so I am all alone in the echoing hall. The Gutbucket crew consider this ostracism a victory, but it suits me. I make myself a cup of my own American coffee and smoke my favourite French cigarettes. The soft flame ignites the tinder-dry tip and I suck and — Ah! As exquisite as being shot! I know how much my dear co-workers would adore the merest puff of this cigarette, so I like to leave the room perfumed.

I can see Dvortsovaya Square from here. A whirlpool of wet cobbles. It takes two minutes just to walk across. A dwarf is running after his umbrella, he’ll cover it in one.

How dare those dairy cows come on so pious with me? The fact is they are stewing with jealousy that I possess the basic female skills to net my men, while they do not. They can’t net their hair. I admit that my little understanding with Head Curator Rogorshev brings me my privileges, quite beside its place in the grander plan, but if they could, any of those warty hags would die for these privileges quicker than you could say ‘knickers round your ankles’. Yes, even Gutbucket Petrovich, with her frothy new panscrubber hairstyle and lardy thighs.

When Petersburg was Leningrad, I could have had the whole ruddy lot posted to the middle of fucking nowhere! Further than nowhere! They’d have been shipped out wholesale to mind a museum in the Gobi Desert and live in gerts!

I was the concubine of two powerful men, you see. First, a politician. I’m not going to tell you his name, he was as high as you could get in the Politburo without being knocked off as a potential threat. High enough to know the codes to nuclear warheads. He could have ended the world if he’d wanted to, virtually. He pulled some strings at the Party Office for me and got me a lovely little apartment overlooking Alexandra Nevskogo Square. When he died suddenly of a heart attack, I selected for my next lover an admiral in the Pacific Fleet. Of course, I was given a new apartment — and the lifelong lease — that befitted an admiral’s station. I still live there now, near Anichkov Bridge, down Fontanki Embankment. He was very affectionate, my admiral. Just between you and me, I think he used to try a little too hard. He’d try to outdo the presents that the politician had bought for me. He was terribly possessive. My men always are.

My God, were those ever the days.

‘Lymko,’ I’d say, ‘I’m a little cold when we go to the ballet at nights...’ And the very next morning a mink coat would be delivered. ‘Lymko, I need a little sparkle in my life...’ I’d show you the diamond brooch that came, but I had to sell it to set up a business venture of Rudi’s, back in our early days, you understand. It would have made Gutbucket Petrovich’s jaw drop so far that she wouldn’t be able to shut her mouth for a week. ‘Lymko, so-and-so at the Party department store was quite beastly last week. Quite improper. I wouldn’t want to get anyone into trouble, but he said things about your professional integrity that hurt me deeply...’ And the next morning so-and-so would discover that he had been promoted to junior cleaner in the public shit-houses around Lake Baikal. Everyone knew about me, but everyone played along to keep the peace. Even his wife, kept out in the naval base at Vladivostock with her clutch of admiral brats.

Another cigarette. The ashtray is already half-full. The dwarf never caught his umbrella.

Back on my plastic chair. I’m almost groaning with boredom. I’m forced to play this game of patience, dying of a lack of interest, day after day after day. The end of the afternoon staggers into view. I’m hungry and I need a vodka. Rogorshev has his own secret bottle. I count the seconds. Forty minutes, times sixty seconds, that’s twenty-four thousand seconds to go. There’s no point looking outside to relieve the boredom, I already know the view. The Dvortsovaya embankment, the Neva, the Petrograd side. I’d get Head Curator Rogorshev to change my gallery, but Rudi says no, not now we’re so close to the big night. Jerome agrees with him for once, so I’m stuck here.

Strange to think, us Russians once mattered in the world. Now we have to go begging for handouts. I’m not a political woman — thinking about politics was too damned dangerous when I was growing up. Besides, what was this Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, really? Republics need real elections and I never saw any of those, I damn well never heard of any Soviets — I’m not even sure what one is. Socialism means the common people own the country, and all my mother ever owned was her intestinal parasites. And where was the union? Us Russians pouring roubles into these pointless little countries full of people eating snakes and babies all over Asia just to stop the Chinks or the Arabs getting their hands on them? That’s not what I call a union. That’s what I call buying up the neighbours. An empire by default. But could we ever kick arse in those days! Jerome told me that some schoolkids in Europe have never even heard of the USSR! ‘Listen, meine kinder,’ I’d tell ’em, ‘about this country you’ve never heard of, we used to have enough nuclear bombs to make your side of the Berlin Wall glow beetroot for the next ten thousand years. Just be grateful. You could have been born with the arms of a mushroom and a bag of pus for a head, if you’d been born at all. Think about it.’

But sometimes, I wonder if much has changed at all, since Scumbag Gorbachev. Sure, for the common people, their floorboards rotted through and down they fell. At the top, I mean. The same people who shredded their Party membership cards now wheel out the democracy bullshit slogans by the steaming cartload — ‘flair and verve in the strategising stages’, ‘originality in capital manipulation’, ‘streamlining and restructuring’. The letters I type out for Head Curator Rogorshev are full of it. But really, where’s the difference? It is now what it’s always been. Recognising the real, but invisible goalposts, and using whatever means are at your disposal to score. These means might be in a bank vault in Geneva, in a hard disc in Hong Kong, encased in your skull or in the cups of your bra. No, nothing’s changed. You used to pay off your local Party thug, now you pay off your local mafia thug. The old Party used to lie, and lie, and lie some more. Now our democratically elected government lies, and lies, and lies some more. The people used to want things, and were told, work and wait for twenty years, and then maybe it’ll be your turn. The people still want things, and are told, work, and save for twenty years, and then maybe it’ll be your turn. Where’s the difference?

I’m going to tell you a secret. Everything is about wanting. Everything. Things happen because of people wanting. Watch closely, and you’ll see what I mean.

But like I said, I’m not a political woman. The things you think of, sitting here.

I recognised Head Curator Rogorshev’s footsteps striding down the corridor outside — with the footsteps of a woman. I heard him telling her the same jokes he had told me months before while I was seducing him, and I heard her laughter flutter, just like mine had. It’s a very special talent that men have, to possess seeing eyes yet be so blind.

‘And here,’ Head Curator Rogorshev said wheeling a tall leggy woman into my gallery, ‘you’ll doubtless recognise Eve and the Serpent, by Lemuel Delacroix.’ He winked clumsily at me, like I couldn’t see what was going on.

She was repulsed by the Head Curator — a sign of good taste — but she hid it well. Western clothing, French boots, an Italian handbag. Dark, a touch of Arabia in the shape of her eyes. Thirty or thirty-one, but to men like Rogorshev she would look younger. No eyeshadow, rouge or foundation, but well-chosen mulberry lipstick. Interesting. I had a rival. Good.

‘Ms Latunsky, this is Tatyana Makuch. Tatyana will be with us on release from the Stanislow Art Museum in Warsaw for the next six weeks. We’re very lucky to have her.’

Tatyana walked over to me, her boots creaking slightly. I stood up. We were the same height. We looked into one another’s eyes, and shook hands slowly. Blue.

‘Charmed,’ I said. ‘Truly.’

‘Delighted,’ she replied. ‘Sincerely.’ What a rich voice. Polish-flavoured Russian. Coffee with chocolate in it.

‘Head Curator Rogorshev,’ I said without looking at him, ‘shall I still come to your office at the usual time this evening? Or will Miss Makuch be taking over your personal dictations from now on?’

Tatyana spoke first, with just the right half-smile. ‘It’s Mrs Makuch. And I’m afraid my talents don’t extend to secretarial skills.’

She was good. She was very good.

‘It’s all right Ms Latunsky,’ Head Curator Rogorshev was saying to me as if he had any say in the matter, ‘please come at the usual hour. I have some important despatches I wish to make,’ God, he spreads it on thick, ‘and I know only you can perform to my satisfaction.’ He got his lines from lunchtime dramas. ‘Please come along now, Mrs Makuch, we must complete our whirlwind tour before the clock strikes six and I turn into a werewolf!’

‘We’ll be seeing each other,’ Tatyana said.

‘We will be.’

A quarter to six. We were shooing out the lingerers. The rain won’t stop and the minutes won’t leave. Head Curator Rogorshev will be prettying himself up in his private washroom now. Not many men get to manicure their own corpse. A cigarette would be nice. Jesus Christ, the sooner Rudi and I get out of this damned place the better. I say to Rudi, ‘Look! Let’s just bag ten whoppers in one night! Some Picassos, some Cézannes, some El Grecos, and in seventy-two hours we could be shopping for chalets in Switzerland on the money we’ve already got, and sell off pieces of the golden goose year by year.’ Lakes, yachts, water-skiing in the summer. I’ve already designed my boudoir. I’m going to have a full-length leopard-skin coat. The locals will call me the White Russian Lady, and all the women will be jealous and warn their cheesemaking financier husbands against me. But they won’t need to worry. I’ll have Rudi. Away from all the distractions of the lowlife here, I know he’ll straighten out. When the weather is warm, he’ll teach our children to swim, and when it’s cold we’ll all go skiing. As a family.

‘Let’s do it! Gregorski can get the visas ready,’ I say. ‘It’s so simple!’

‘It’s not simple at all!’ he says. ‘Forget the fact you’re a woman and use your brain! The reason it’s worked so far is that we haven’t been greedy. If we lift pictures at a faster rate than Jerome can replace them, people notice they are missing! And for every single picture that is missing, multiply by ten the number of pigs Interpol give the case! Multiply by twenty the pay-offs I have to dish out! Multiply by thirty the difficulty I have in finding buyers! And multiply by fifty the years we’ll get in the slammer!’

‘It’s all very well for you to lecture me in arithmetic, it’s not you who has to get skewered by that bald porker every week!’

Then Rudi really bawls me out and if he’s been drinking slaps me about a bit, just a bit, because of the drink, and he storms out and goes for a drive and I might not see him for a couple of days. He’s under a lot of pressure.

‘I love you!’ yells Head Curator Rogorshev, jockeying up and down with my bra strap wrapped round his windpipe. ‘Rabbit’s coming! Oh, gobble me and be spliced my fairy cake. I gobble you and devour you! Bunny’s coming! Destroy me, my whore, my master, I love you!’

I know he’s imagining I’m Tatyana. That’s fine. I make it tolerable by imagining he is Rudi. I hope he’ll finish soon so I can have a cigarette. I’ll steal some of his Cuban cigars for Rudi, to impress his business contacts. I wrap my legs around his hippo girth to hasten the end. He groans like a kid on an out-of-control go-cart hurtling down a hill, and mercifully soon comes the hanged-man gasp and the legs on his eighteenth-century chaise longue stop squeaking.

‘God, my god, I love you.’ He kisses the flat bone between my breasts. For a moment I wonder if he means it, whether there is an alchemy that turns lust to love. ‘You’re not jealous of Tatyana, are you? She could never replace you, you know, Margot, my love...’

I blow a smoke ring and watch it spinning into the corners of his office, where the evening is thickening. I imagine a circle of wild swans and pat his toupee-less pate. He doesn’t even bother to take his socks off these days. His portrait — farcically flattering — stares down from behind the desk. Quite the man of destiny.

All alchemists were frauds and liars, but it doesn’t matter. I’ll work on Rudi. He doesn’t know it yet but we’ll be spending Christmas in Zurich.

Head Curator Rogorshev always leaves first. He showers in his private office bathroom so his wife can pretend nothing is happening, and I might do a little paperwork for the sake of appearances. I hear him, singing and shampooing me down the plug-hole. He puts on a new shirt, kisses me to show me he cares, and goes off. I might do some invoicing for Rudi’s cleaning company, or make Jerome out a new pass, or some free passes for Rudi’s clients. Or I might just stare out of the window at the cupolas of St Andrew’s Cathedral. I usually leave around 7.30. Jerome wants the guards to stay used to seeing me around after hours.

‘Nothing to declare tonight?’ the Head of Security at the staff exit grins his buttery grin. I wish I could be around to see it dribble off his chin when the shit explodes. He knows about my affair with Rogorshev, and has the hots for me himself. Of course, it’s a part of the plan for everyone to know. He body-searches me! Me, Margot Latunsky! Him, an ex-army malingerer who thinks shiny badges and a walkie-talkie make him Rambo. I feel his hands lingering longer than they should. I think of ways I could incriminate him from Zurich.

‘No, Chief,’ I demur, a wary little stray, ‘no stolen masterpieces tonight.’

‘Good girl. The floor polishers are due...’

‘Not for three weeks. Three weeks today. Nine-thirty p.m.’

‘Three weeks today.’ He ticks a clipboard and waves me through. I feel his eyes pucker my body as I walk away. He is repulsive, but I can’t blame him. I’ve always had this mystical allure to men.

In the winter, I take the metro. Otherwise, I prefer to walk. If the weather’s fine I walk up to the Troisky Bridge, and then cross the Mars Fields, where the women wait. But if it’s raining I walk down Nevsky Prospect, a street of ghosts if there ever was one. Jerome says that every city has its street of ghosts. Past the Stroganov Palace and the Kazan Cathedral. Past the Aeroflot offices, and the scrubby Armenian Café. Past the flat where I made love to my Politburo member. It’s been turned into an American Express office now. All these new shops, Benetton, The Häagen-Dazs shop, Nike, Burger King, a shop that sells nothing but camera film and key-rings, another that sells Swatches and Rolexes. High streets are becoming the same all over the world, I suppose. In the subways is an orderly row of beggars and buskers. I buy a pack of cigarettes from a kiosk, and a little bottle of vodka. Surely buskers in no other city on Earth can hold a candle to ours. A saxophonist, a string quartet, a wisp of a woman playing a didgeridoo and a Ukrainian choir all competing for spare roubles. Sometimes I give money to the priests, I don’t know why, they’ve never given anything to me. The beggars often hold cards on which is written their own particular sob story, often with translations in different languages. Only visitors to the city bother to read them. Petersburg is built of sob stories, pile-driven down into the mud.

Go over the Anchikov bridge and turn left. Mine is four down. Through the heavy iron door, past the cabin where the porter is sleeping — a quick look in my mail-box where, to my surprise, there’s a letter from my dear, ailing sister — across the weedy courtyard and up three flights of stairs. If Rudi’s at home the TV is turned up loud. Rudi can’t abide silence. Tonight it’s all quiet. We had the little disagreement about our leaving date yesterday evening, so he’s decided to concentrate on business for a little, I suppose. That’s fine. I cook the fish that I bought for our dinner, and leave him half in the pot in case he comes home later. He’s never away for more than one or two nights. Not usually.

The White Nights are here. Bluish midnight dims to indigo at about two. The sun will rise again a little later without pomp. I stay in my living room and think about the past and about Switzerland. This is where my admiral and I made love. Under this very window. He used to tell me stories of the ocean, Sakhalin, the White Sea, submarines under the ice. We watched the stars come out. I pile the washing-up in the sink and light a mosquito coil. I put the Cuban cigars in Rudi’s coat pocket so he’ll find them and think about me. I can hear jazz playing somewhere. There was a time when I would have gone and found it and danced and been admired, desired. Men’s faces shone. They vied for the next dance.

I light another cigarette, and pour myself a brandy. Just a small one, and not the best bottle. Rudi needs that for when his business partners come over for meetings. I set fire to my sister’s letter, unopened, and lay it in the ashtray. That’ll teach her. Sipping my brandy I watch the front of flame turn the bitch’s words into a ribbon of smoke. Rise, spiral, and disappear, up, and up, and up.

The jazz has stopped. Rudi still isn’t home. Little Nemya, fed and happy, comes and curls up on my lap, falling asleep as I tell her my troubles.

Jerome is making tea. His movements are clockwork, like a butler’s. Rudi is late again. Rudi is usually late by three quarters of an hour. It’s a beautiful summer’s day around lunchtime, and the streets and parks of Vasilevsky Island are shimmering in the heat as though underwater.

‘What gives the tea that smell?’

Jerome thinks for a moment. ‘I don’t know the Russian for it. In English it’s called “bergamot”. It’s the rind of a species of citrus.’

I just say, ‘I see. Nice teacup.’

Jerome hands me a cup, on a saucer, and sits down. His Russian is fluent, but I never know what to say to him. ‘This bone china is a last surviving luxury,’ he says, ‘real Wedgwood. It should be worth a lot, but since your civilisation fell into its own basement bin I probably couldn’t even get a tin of tuna for it. Don’t drop it.’

‘I’ve never broken a beautiful thing in my life,’ I tell him.

‘I’m sure that might be true. Anyway,’ Jerome stands up again, ‘since our nouveau riche Robert de Niro has better things to do, allow me to give you a private view of my handiwork.’ He goes into the next room, his studio, and I hear things being shunted across the floorboards. A camphor tree swims in the sun in the little park next to St Andrew’s Cathedral. Over the Leytenanta Bridge on Angliyaskaya Embankment a new Holiday Inn is being constructed. Today is Heroes’ Day, so nobody is on the scaffolding. I hear a sportscar being revved to a roar and a sudden screech of brakes.

‘Ah,’ Jerome calls through. ‘Sounds like Rudi.’

Jerome’s apartment is sparse, in a not unpleasant part of the city. Not as well situated as mine, of course. On stuffy days when the wind is from the north you can smell the chemical factory, but other than that it’s not so bad. It’s bigger than my apartment, if you include his studio — though he never lets anyone into his studio. The living room is dominated by the largest drinks cabinet I’ve ever heard of. It dominates the room like a cathedral altar in a country chapel. Apparently it was a present from Leonid Brezhnev. Jerome keeps the place tidier than a woman would. But Jerome has never had a woman here, or anywhere else, I imagine. I wonder if all English men are so orderly, or whether it’s only English queers. Jerome was a spy in the Cold War. He used to lecture in art history at Cambridge University. Moscow hasn’t paid his war pension for six or seven years now, and he’s wanted for treason in Britain, so he’s scuppered. He always talks about selling his memoirs, but ex-spies trying to flog their stories are two-a-rouble these days. His only marketable talent is his ability to paint copies of masterpieces. That’s why he’s a member of our circle. I notice a shiny, maroon flying jacket that could not possibly belong to tall spindly Jerome. I need a cigarette, so I light one. There’s nothing to use as an ashtray so I have to use the saucer. From a nearby room I can hear a piano.

Jerome returns, unveiling the picture, tutting at my cigarette.

Eve and the Serpent, not by Lemuel Delacroix, but by Jerome... I don’t know his family name. Smith or Churchill, probably. I’ve never much liked Jerome, but I have to admire his craftsmanship. ‘I can’t see how anyone could tell them apart. Even the way the gilt on the frame is worn away on the bottom.’

‘I can’t quite get the cracks in the glaze right, not quite. And there are secrets in the blue pigment that got lost in the nineteenth century, and not even Gregorski’s money can procure them. No, it’s not perfect. But it will do. Nobody is going to be looking for a difference until it’s too late.’

‘You’ve spent twice as long on this one, compared to the last.’

‘Well, my dear, that’s Russian Constructivism for you! Kandinsky’s an absolute cinch, from a copyist’s point of view. Just measure the proportions of the stripes, get the tone right, slap on the paint and bingo! No, Delacroix deserves more than that... you could call it a labour of love, this one. I would have liked a fortnight more, just to tamper, but Gregorski’s chomping at the bit for another sting this month. I could die to get my hands on the original, though, even if it’s only to look after it overnight. Moreover, the Delacroix is worth enough to let me raise the Titanic and buy up Bermuda.’

‘A quarter of Bermuda,’ I reminded him. ‘Split four ways.’

‘Did you know that Delacroix was a friend of Nicholas I? He was employed by the Tsar several summers running to help decorate the Cathedral of Our Saviour. A Westerner in service to the Russian state. Maybe that helps to explains the empathy I feel with the man.’ When Jerome rattles on like this I feel I’m no longer in the room with him.

A coded knock at the door. I wait for the sequence to finish, rolling my eyeballs at this pantomime. The code is correct, but Jerome waves me through into the kitchen anyway, his finger on his lips. I suppose old habits die hard. ‘Open up!’ says Rudi, just like he always does. ‘It’s draughty out here.’ Jerome relaxes. The word ‘draughty’ indicates that Rudi is alone and hasn’t got a gun pointed in the small of his back. ‘Cold’ means ‘get away’. Exactly how you would get out of a sixth-floor apartment with one entrance and no fire-escape is another matter. But boys will be boys.

‘Babe,’ Rudi greets me, breezing in and handing Jerome a pizza he picked up from one of his restaurants. His new suede jacket is the colour of blackcurrant juice. He likes to call me ‘babe’, even though he is younger than me by eight or nine years. He’s smiling. A good sign. He takes off his wraparound sunglasses, and whoops at the picture. ‘Jerome, even better than your normal high standard!’

Jerome mock bows. ‘How good of you to drop by!’ Rudi never sees Jerome’s irony, leaving it to me to feel offended for him. ‘Yes, thank you. I am rather pleased with my production. How did the meeting with our public guardian friend at the City Hall go?’

‘Gregorski’s cool. He’ll send someone over to pick up the Delacroix here the morning after.’

Right then, it felt wrong. ‘Why aren’t you meeting the buyers directly this time?’

Rudi lifted his hand like the Pope. ‘Helsinki’s a long way to go, babe... Why not let them come here? It’s a sign we’re moving up. It also means I don’t have to risk my neck at the border... Oh, Kitten, I missed you last night...’ There was a silliness to Rudi’s grin. A landslipped cocaine silliness. A bad sign. He tried to grab my breasts, but I didn’t let myself be grabbed, and Rudi fell onto the sofa laughing. ‘Tell her, Jerome!’

‘Tell her what?’ Jerome came through with plates and a knife for the pizza.

‘Gregorski’s on the level.’

Jerome frowned. ‘If he’s not, and chooses to sell us up the river, we will be royally butt-fucked from here to Windsor.’

Rudi’s smile shrivelled up like a burning page. ‘Jesus Christ, what’s the matter with you two today? The sun’s shining, in two weeks — and forty-eight hours — we’re going to be two hundred thousand dollars richer, and here you two are looking like you’ve had to sell your mother to a body-donor pedlar! The point is for Mr High-and-fucking-Mighty Gregorski, if we’re not on the level, he is the butt-fucked. He’s not dealing with tadpoles any more. I have muscle in this city. I have muscle outside this city. I have muscle.’

‘Oh, St Ciaran Above, nobody’s disputing that—’ began Jerome, making the mistake of sounding martyred.

Rudi’s eyes began to shine. ‘Dead, damned, fucking right nobody is disputing that! Kirsch is not disputing that! Shirliker and his associates are not disputing that! Arturo Fucking Kopeck is not disputing that! You know who Arturo Kopeck is? Only the biggest — fucking — crack dealer east of Berlin and west of the Urals! So why are my own partners disputing the notion that I have more muscle that Boris fucking Frankenstein?’

Jerome’s owl gaze. ‘Nobody’s disputing that. Are we, Margarita?’

My poor, dear, baby. Bad cocaine. ‘No, Rudi. Nobody’s doing any disputing.’

Rudi seemed to suddenly forget what we’d been talking about. ‘Any tabasco sauce, Jerome? That dumb Georgian bitch forgot to put any on. Big tits, gives a good blowjob, but dippy as horseshit. Remind me to sack her before she gets too far behind on her rent.’

‘I’ll get the tabasco,’ I said, smiling at Rudi’s little joke, ‘and shall I make you some nice strong coffee?’

He didn’t bawl ‘no’ so that meant ‘yes’.

We ate in silence until half the pizza was gone.

‘There’s one last little touch,’ said Rudi, ‘that I’ve decided to introduce for the next pick-up.’

‘Do tell,’ said Jerome.

‘Margarita here meets us and the other cleaners at the staff entrance, instead of waiting for me in the gallery.’

‘I don’t see why,’ I said.

‘That is precisely why I am the brains of this operation. You never see why, and I always do. Listen. You come and meet us. The girls go off to their allotted galleries separately. We go to the Delacroix Gallery. As usual, we make the switch, wax the floors, take it back to the staff entrance, and out through security. And what precisely is the difference?’

Jerome picked prawns out of congealing cheese. ‘You’ve been accompanied the whole time by Winter Palace personnel. Are there any anchovies hiding down here?’

‘And therefore placing me even more above suspicion than usual!’ Rudi swished his wine around the glass. ‘These little details are the Rudi Touch. This is why my outfit thrives the way it does. This is why Gregorski selected me for this cleaning contract, why he wanted me for this operation: not Kirsch, not Chekhov, not the Koenighovs, but me. Now. Any questions?’

Jerome shook his head nonchalantly. His part was over now. A pleasant life he must have, playing around all day with his oil paints, waiting for the money to appear in his bank account. His own bank account.

‘Rudi, my darling,’ I began...

‘What do you want?’

‘I was wondering, when, exactly, we were thinking of...’

‘...of what?’

‘You know, what we’ve been discussing...’

Rudi’s emotions are so visible. He doesn’t try to hide anything from me. That’s one reason I love him. He slammed his plate down and the pizza skidded off.

‘Oh Jesus wept! Not again! Don’t get old on me again, Margarita! I will not have you getting old and weird and wrinkled on me again! Fuck, you make me feel like it’s my grandmother I’m shagging sometimes!’

I love Rudi, but I hate him too when his eyes shine like that. It’s the bad cocaine. ‘What are we getting all this money for if we’re never going to use it?’

‘Is it a car you want? Is it a coat you want? Are you in debt to somebody again? Tell me who’s been lending you money! Who? WHO!’

‘No, nobody, nobody! It’s—’ I looked at Jerome, who, sighing, withdrew into his studio, taking his coffee.

‘—it’s you I want, my love. It’s our life in Switzerland that I want.’

‘A golden goose is living on our roof and shitting eggs down our chimney, here, Margarita! Don’t kill it! Gather the golden eggs!’

‘I’m the one who gets screwed every week for these golden eggs.’

‘We all have to make sacrifices.’

‘I don’t know how much longer I’m prepared to keep making mine. Surely we have enough money in the account now for us to not need to—’

‘We haven’t. I had to bribe the customs people a small fortune last time. Then of course I have to give Gregorski his whopping cut. He set the whole thing up, remember.’

‘I never get the chance to forget Gregorski, in his armoured Mercedes-Benz. Please, darling. Just tell me. How much money do we have?’

‘It’s your period, isn’t it. Admit it. It’s your period. Jesus. They bleed for seven days but they still don’t die.’

‘How much?’

‘Quite a lot. But not enough.’

‘How much is quite a lot? Just tell me!’

‘Margarita, if you can’t calm down and discuss this like an intelligent adult I’m going to have to terminate this interview.’

‘I am calm. I’m asking a simple question. Rudi? How much money do we have from the sale of our five priceless works of art sold so far? Please?’

‘In US dollars? Six figures.’

‘Tell me!’

Rudi switched tack. ‘I manage the finances! It’s your job to get us in and keep us covered! You think you can do what I do better, do you? DO YOU?’

It’s the cocaine, and the pressure. I stayed calm, and started the pout. Margarita Latunsky plays men like a master violinist. When I want something from a woman I get angry. When I want something from a man I pout. ‘No, darling, it’s just that the Head Curator paws me week after week and I can’t see an end to it and I love you so much—’ I feigned the watery eyes.

Rudi snarled and looked around like he needed something to sink his teeth into. ‘You want out? You want to go up to a man like Gregorski and say, “Oh, by the way, I don’t fancy this line of work any more, thanks for all the stolen artwork revenue but I’m off now, I’ll send you a postcard”? Get real, woman! He’d eat you for fucking breakfast.’

I thought he was going to hit me. ‘I thought that’s why we chose Switzerland, because it would be safe—’

‘It’s not that simple. Gregorski’s a powerful man.’

‘I know about powerful men—’

Rudi mimicked me. ‘“I know about powerful men.” You’re talking about the Party crony paperpusher who used to shag you? Or your geriatric cabin-boy with the gammy leg?’

‘He was a captain.’

Rudi spat a ‘huh!’ ‘What do you know about hiding money? Laundering it? I can give you your share any time you like, baby, but how long do you think it would be after you split, before the pigs in Switzerland ask exactly how you came across this truckload of roubles you’re bringing into their country? We are a team! You can’t just walk out on us any time you fancy.’

‘When can we go?’

‘In time! In time! Fuck it! It’s no fucking use trying to reason with you when you’re in this kind of mood. I’m going for a drive!’

He slammed the door behind him.

Jerome emerged. ‘He didn’t damage the Wedgwood, did he?’

‘He’s nervous,’ I explain. ‘Now we’re so close to getting away, it’s only natural he gets a little jittery...’

Jerome said something in English.

Today is my birthday.

My feet shouldn’t ache so much, not at my age.

As I climbed the stairs back up to my flat I heard my phone ringing. I fumbled for my key and skidded down the hallway. You see? I understand him, that’s why I forgive him. That’s why I’m not like the other women who take advantage of him.

‘I’m back.’ I was breathless—

‘Hello? Miss Latunsky? I hope you don’t mind me telephoning you at home. This is Tatyana Makuch, from the gallery. Have I called at a bad time?’

I fought to control my panting, and to keep the disappointment out of my voice. ‘No, no, I just got back, I’ve been running.’

‘Oh... jogging in the park?’

‘I mean I was running to catch the phone. To get the phone.’

‘Are you busy this afternoon?’

‘Yes. No. Maybe. Why?’

‘I’m lonely. I was wondering if we could meet and I could buy you a coffee, or if you’d like to come to visit my shoe-box and I could cook you authentic Warsaw Vorsch.’

Tatyana? I heard myself saying ‘yes’. When was I going to make it up with Rudi? But there again, why should he find me here pining for him when he gets back? Maybe it would do him good just to pretend that I don’t need him as much as I do. Teach him a little lesson.

‘Great. You know the coffee shop behind the Pushkin Theatre?’

‘Yes—’

‘Excellent. I’ll meet you there in an hour.’

That was that. Nemya padded in and jumped onto my lap for some adoration. I told Nemya about Rudi’s tantrum, and about what Switzerland was going to be like, and I wondered why I’d just agreed to give the rest of my day off to a supercilious rival from Poland.

The empty café smelt of dark wood and coffee. Dust motes eddied through slats of sunlight as I barged open the door. A bell jangled and a radio was playing in the back room. Tatyana hadn’t arrived yet, even though I was late.

‘Hello, Margarita.’

Tatyana shifted slightly and came into the light. Her hair shone gold. She was dressed in a smart black velvet suit and her body was lean and tucked in. I had to admit, I could see the appeal. To men like Rogorshev.

‘I didn’t see you.’

‘Here I am. Well, won’t you sit down? Thank you very much for coming. What would you like to drink? The Colombian blend is excellent.’

Was she trying to impress me? ‘Then I’ll have the Colombian blend, when the waitress wakes up.’

A man appeared from the back. ‘The Colombian?’ A strong Ukrainian accent.

‘Yes.’

He sucked in his cheeks, and disappeared again.

Tatyana smiled. ‘Were you surprised when I called you?’ A psychotherapist’s tone.

‘Mildly. Should I have been?’

She offered me a cigarette. I offered her a Benson and Hedges. She took one but didn’t admire it, like any Russian would have done. Benson and Hedges must be commonplace in Poland. I let her light mine.

‘How long have you been working at the Hermitage, Margarita?’

‘About a year, now.’

‘You must have some cosy contacts there.’ Despite myself I liked her smile. She was being nosy, but only because she wanted to be friendly.

Margarita Latunsky can take girls like Tatyana in her stride. ‘You mean the Head Curator? Oh dear, have the Gutbucket herd been gossiping again?’

‘I get the impression they’d gossip about grass growing in a ditch.’

‘My relationship with the Head Curator is an open secret. But it started after I came. I got the job through some connections my — I have, in the city hall. There’s no harm. I’m single, and his marriage is not my problem.’

‘I quite agree. We have a lot in common in our attitudes.’

‘You said you were Mrs Makuch?’

Tatyana made a whirlpool of cream in her coffee. ‘Can you keep a secret?’

‘I can keep secrets very safe indeed...’

‘I tell people like Rogorshev that just to keep them off my back. The situation’s more complicated than that...’ I waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. ‘So then, Margarita. Tell me about your life. I want to know everything.’

Eight hours later we were very drunk, at least I knew that I was, hunched over a back table at The Shamrock Pub on Dekabristov Street. A trio of Cubans were playing jazz snaky and slow, and there were man-high plants with rubbery leaves everywhere. The place was lit by candles, which is one of the scrimpiest ways to save money while pretending to be chic known to the entertainment business, and it occurred to me that whenever I was with Tatyana the light was bad. Tatyana knew a lot about jazz, and a lot about wine, which made me believe there was more money in her background than she was letting on. She was also insisting on paying for everything. I refused three times, but Tatyana insisted four times, which came as something of a relief, I admit. I hate asking Rudi for money.

She knew a lot about a lot of things. A black man stood up on stage, and played a trumpet with a mute. Tatyana glowed, and I saw how beautiful she was. I imagined a deep tragedy in her past. I know from my own life, severe beauty can be a handicap. ‘More like Miles Davis than Miles Davis,’ she murmured.

‘Wasn’t he the first man to fly across the Atlantic?’

She hadn’t heard me. ‘The brassy sun lost behind the clouds.’

We were attracting a lot of attention from the men. As well we might. Tatyana was undoubtedly a rare creature in these climes, and for my part, well, you already know the calibre of man Margarita Latunsky draws hither. Even the trumpeter was giving me the eye over his shiny horn, I swear it. I wondered what it would be like to do it with a black man. Arabs and Orientals and Americans I’ve had dalliances with, yes, but never a black.

Three young couples came in and sat down near the front. They must have still been in their teens. The boys in borrowed suits, trying to look sophisticated. The girls, trying to look at ease. All of them looking awkward.

Tatyana nodded at the six. ‘Young love.’ Her voice had a serrated edge.

‘Wouldn’t you change places with them, if you could?’

‘Why on earth would I want to do that?’

‘They look so fine, and young, and wrapped up in each other. Love is so fresh and clean at that age. Don’t you think?’

‘Margarita! I’m surprised at you! We both know there’s no such thing as love.’

‘What do you call it?’

Tatyana snuffed out her cigarette. That sly smile. ‘Mutations of wanting.’

‘You’re not serious.’

‘I am quite serious. Look at those kids. The boys want to get the girls to bed so they can have the corks popped off their bottles, and gush forth. When a man blows his nose you don’t call it love. Why get all misty-eyed when a man blows another part of his anatomy? As for the girls, they’re either going along for the ride because they can get things they want from their boys, or else maybe they enjoy being in bed too. Though I doubt it. I never knew an eighteen-year-old boy who didn’t drop the egg off his spoon at the first fence.’

‘But that’s lust! You’re talking about lust, not love.’

‘Lust is the hard sell. Love is the soft sell. The profit margin is exactly the same.’

‘But love’s the opposite of self-interest. True, tender, love is pure and selfless.’

‘No. True, tender love is self-interest so sinewy that it only looks selfless.’

‘I’ve known love — I know love — and it is giving and not taking. We’re not just animals.’

‘We’re only animals. What does the Head Curator give to you?’

‘I’m not talking about him.’

‘Whoever. But think. Why do you think any man really loves you? If you’re honest with yourself, Margarita, the answer will be that he stands to gain in some way. Tell me. Why does he love you, and why do you love him back?’

I shook my head. ‘We’re talking about love. There is no “why”. That’s the point.’

‘There is always a “why”, because there is always something that the beloved wants. It might be that he protects you. It might be that he makes you feel special. It might be that he is a way out, a route to some shining future away from the dreary now. It might be that he is the father of your unborn babies. Or it might be that he gives you prestige. Love is a big knot of whys.’

‘What’s wrong with that?’

‘I’m not saying anything’s wrong with it. History is made of people’s desires. But that’s why I smile when people get sentimental about this mysterious force of pure “love” which they think they are steering. “Loving somebody” means “wanting something”. Love makes people do selfish, moronic, cruel, and inhumane things. You asked, would I like to change place with those kids? It would be nice to steal their twenties off them, sure, if I could transmigrate into them with my present mind intact, but otherwise I’d rather change places with a terrier in the zoo. To be in love is to be at the mercy of your lover’s desires. If someone put a bullet through your lover, they’d be releasing you.’

I watched a horrible image of a bath-plug being yanked from Rudi’s chest, and blood gushing out. ‘If someone put a bullet through my lover I would kill them.’

The pub is jumping around too much and the music throbs in my eyes so they run. Tatyana says, ‘Let’s go outside,’ and suddenly we are, and I’ve been swept over a waterfall and down I plummet into the late light. The streets were filled with shadows and brightness and footsteps and candy-colours and tramlines and swallows. I’ve never noticed the windows above the Glinka Capella, how graceful they are. What are those things called? Jerome would know. Flying buttresses? The stars are not quite there tonight. A light is moving amongst them. A comet, or an angel, or the last decrepit Soviet space-station falling down to Earth? Some passersbys look at me askance, so I straighten myself up to show them I can walk straight, and the neck of a lamp-post swings down like a giraffe’s. One of the office lights is on. Somebody is being wanted by the Head Curator, but it’s not me, and it’s not Tatyana, not tonight. We walk past a dark car. ‘Oy, love, how much for the pair of you?’ I spit at the window and summon up my foulest curses, but Tatyana whisks me onwards.

‘Come on,’ says Tatyana, ‘let’s go back to my place for some coffee. I can make us some hot dogs. I’ll squeeze some sweet mustard into yours, if you’re a good Margarita.’ Everywhere I look, you could frame it and just by doing that you’d have a picture. Not a Jerome picture. A real picture, more real than the ones we steal. Even they are just copies. Jerome’s are copies of copies. That boy’s head. The wishing well. All those girls in green eyeshadow and apricot blusher, being herded into the back of the police van, whisked off to the cop shop, to be fined fifteen dollars before being released. They’ll have to work extra hard for the rest of the night to make up for lost time. This is where the tsar was blown up, my mother told me a long time ago, and I say it now to Tatyana, but Tatyana didn’t hear me, because my words forgot their names. The firecrackers going off in a distant quarter, or might they be gunshots? That would be a good picture. The car with bricks for wheels. The shape of the factory roof, and the chimney, sooty bricks, a picture made of sooty bricks. The horse running down an alley, how did the horse get off its pedestal? A boy with dinosaur fin-hair sways past on roller-blades. A tramp with his bag of newspapers for a pillow on the bench. Tourists in their bright ‘mug me’ shirts, the canals and the domes and the crosses and the sickles and, ah... Even the mud by the river...

I breathe because I can’t not. I love Rudi because I can’t not.

‘Tatyana,’ I say, leaning over the railings and looking into the water. ‘You’re wrong.’

‘Not far,’ her voice says. ‘Can you get there?’

A police boat moves down the river. Its red and blue lights are beautiful.

All I remember about Tatyana’s flat is a sober clock, that dropped tocks like pebbles down a deep shaft. Things gleamed, and swung, and Tatyana was close, saying she wanted something, she was warm, and I didn’t want to leave for a while. At one point I remember that today is my birthday, and I try to tell Tatyana, but I’ve already forgotten what it was I wanted to say. I remember Tatyana loading me into a taxi and her telling the taxi driver my address as she pays him.

Rudi was home when I got back. It was about three in the morning. I hesitated for a moment before going in. He’ll want to know where I’ve been. I can safely tell him about Tatyana. He shouldn’t mind. He can even check up on her if he wants to, though of course he trusts me completely.

I turned the key, opened the door, and had the shock of my life to find Rudi standing in the hallway in his boxer shorts and socks, pointing his gun at me. A pump of adrenalin flushed my wooziness away. The bathroom light was on behind him and a tap was running. He tutted, and lowered it.

‘You’re a naughty kitten, Margarita. You didn’t use the code. I’m disappointed.’

Nemya bounded across the hallway and arched herself around my calf, shoving my leg in the direction of the kitchen. ‘Darling, I didn’t use the code because I live here.’

‘How was I supposed to know that you weren’t the police?’

I didn’t have an answer. I never do with Rudi. But he was in a calm frame of mind: he hadn’t shouted at me yet. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s all right. Most of us make mistakes from time to time. But kitten, don’t make this one again, or you might cause an accident. Come in, come in. You’re late back, aren’t you? I was getting worried. There’s a lot of nasty doggies out there could eat up a little kitten.’

‘I’ve been out with a colleague from work — she’s called Tatyana, and—’ I began to explain but Rudi didn’t seem to be interested. In the living room was a big bunch of roses, red and yellow and pink ones.

‘Rudi! Are they for me?’

Rudi smiled, and I melted. He remembered my birthday! For the first time in our three years! ‘Of course they are, kitten. Who else would I be buying flowers for now, hey?’ He came over and kissed me on my forehead. I closed my eyes and opened my mouth to kiss him full on the lips, but he’d already turned away. Rudi had forgotten to put any water in the vase, so I carried them through to the kitchen. They had a beautiful scent. A garden from long ago.

‘I have a small favour to ask,’ Rudi called through, ‘I know you won’t mind.’

‘Oh?’

‘I have a business partner coming to town for a short time. Actually he’s a friend of Gregorski’s. Very high up in all the right international circles. He’s from Mongolia. Runs the place, virtually. He needs somewhere to stay.’

‘And?’

‘I thought the spare room would suit him.’

I watched the water brimming over the top of the vase. ‘If he runs Mongolia, why can’t Gregorski put him in a penthouse?’ I ignored Nemya, who was reminding me that she had claws.

‘Because then the police could keep tabs on him. He runs Mongolia unofficially. Even Mongolians have to pretend to have elections to get loans.’

‘So you want me to put up a criminal? I thought we’d left those days behind.’

‘We have, kitten, we have! I’m just doing a friend a favour!’

‘Why not go the whole hog and open up a doss house for junkie pyromaniacs?’

‘For Christ’s sake don’t overreact! I keep boxes of merchandise in the spare room: where’s the difference? And he’s not a criminal. He’s an official with enough high-level contacts to not be searched at the border beyond Irkutsk. Helsinki’s off, by the way. Gregorski’s found a buyer in Beijing. Our friend will be taking the Delacroix back. The less evidence of his tracks the better.’

‘Why doesn’t Gregorski just buy the police off like he always does?’

‘Because Gregorski only holds sway at the Finnish and Latvian borders. He can’t trust his usual channels as far east as Siberia. He can only trust me, and us. Kitten...’ I felt Rudi’s arms slide around my stomach, ‘let’s not argue... it’s for our future...’ His thumb wormed into my navel. ‘This is where our baby’s going to be one day...’ He nuzzled his face into my neck, and I tried to stay cross. ‘Babe, kitten, baby kitten... I know it’s a lot to ask, but we’re so close now. I’ve been thinking, about what you were saying earlier, at Jerome’s. About Austria. You’re quite right, you know. We should get out while the going’s good. I apologise for flying off the handle. I hate myself afterwards. You know that. It’s the stress. I know you understand. I sometimes lash out at the things that are most precious to me. I hate myself sometimes,’ Rudi was murmuring. ‘Look at me. Look at me. Look at how much this stupid man adores you...’

I turned and looked into his beautiful young eyes. I see how much.

‘Guess where I went today, kitten. To the travel agents, to check ticket prices to Zurich.’

‘You did?’

‘Yeah. They were closed, because of the holiday. But I went. And I’m not going to have that greasy curator bastard insult my kitten no more. Once we’ve gone, Margarita, his life is in your hands. Just one word from you, and I’ll have someone press the button on him. I swear on the Virgin Mary Mother.’

See? Tatyana was wrong. Rudi wants to make me happy. He’s going to give everything up, for us. How could I have doubted him, even for a moment? We kissed, long and hard. I whispered, ‘Rudi, you are the best present I’ve ever had on my birthday...’

Rudi murmured, ‘Yeah? It’s coming up soon, isn’t it?’ Eventually he drew back, his hands on my hips. ‘So. It’s okay for our buyer’s agent to keep a low profile here, yeah? It’ll only be until after the swap. Cleaning night. Just two weeks.’

‘I don’t know, Rudi. I was hoping you and I could spend a little time together, before we leave Petersburg. We’ve got a lot of planning to do. When’s he due?’

Rudi turned away. I opened a can of cat food. ‘He came today. He’d flown in, and really needed a bath, so I ran one for him. He’s in there now.’

‘What?’

‘He’s, er, already here.’

‘Rudi! How could you? This is where you and I and Nemya live!’

I opened the kitchen door and felt like I’d entered a piece of theatre. Standing against the window with his back to me stood a short, dark, lithe man. He was wearing Rudi’s dressing gown, one I’d made for him out of scarlet flannel, and was inspecting Rudi’s gun. I heard myself say, ‘Huh?’

Moments passed before he turned around. ‘Good evening, Miss Latunsky. Thank you for your hospitality. It’s good to revisit your majestic city.’ Perfect Russian, an accent dusty with Central Asia. Nemya yowled for her supper behind me. ‘Your little cat and I are already acquainted. She considers me her very own Uncle Suhbataar. I hope you will do the same.’

My gallery is empty now, so I walk over to the window to stretch my legs. A storm is coming, and the air is stretched tight like the skin of a drum. Walking to work today, the city felt left to brew. The Neva is sultry, turgid as an oil spill. An election is being held next week, and vans with tinny tannoys are driving around the city talking about reform and integrity and trust.

A mosquito buzzes in my ear. I splat it. A smear of human blood oozed from its fuselage. I look for somewhere to wipe it and choose the curtain. The guide is approaching, so I quickly sit down again. The guide turns the corner, speaking Japanese. I catch the word ‘Delacroix’. In eight days the same guide will be saying the same things waving the same pointy stick at a completely different picture, and only six people in the world — Rudi, myself, Jerome, Gregorski, that Suhbataar man, and the buyer in Beijing — will ever know. Jerome says the perfect crime is that which nobody knows has been committed. The Sheep nod. Inside, I snicker. They’ve already taken photographs of several fakes today. And paid their foreigner’s price for the privilege.

A little girl walks over to me and offers me a sweet. She says something in Japanese and shakes the bag. She looks about eight, and is clearly bored by our wonders of the Renaissance world. Her skin is the colour of coffee with a dash of cream. Her hair is pleated, and she’s in her best dress, strawberry red with white lace. Her big sister sees her, and giggles, and several of the adults turn around. I take a sweet, and one of the Japanese cameras flashes. That annoys me about Asians. They’ll photograph anything. But what a beautiful smile the little girl has! For a moment I’d like to take her home. Little girls are like old cats. If they don’t like you nothing on Earth will make them pretend to.

My Kremlin official lover insisted that I had the abortion. I didn’t want to. I was scared of the operation. The priests and old women had always said there was a gulag in hell for women who killed their babies. But I was more scared of being cast off by my lover and winding up in the gutter, so I gave way. He didn’t want to risk bad publicity: an illegitimate child would have been evidence of our affair, and although everyone knew corruption and scandal kept the Soviet Union ticking, appearances had to be kept up for the plebs. Otherwise, why bother? I knew that doing it would make my mother howl with shame in her grave, and that was a pleasing thought.

Most women had one or two abortions during their lifetime, it was no big deal. I had it done at the old Party hospital over at Movskovsky Prospect, so the quality of care should have been better than that for ordinary women. It wasn’t. I don’t know what went wrong. I kept bleeding for days afterwards, and when I went back to see the doctor, he refused to see me, and the receptionist got security to escort me out. They just left me on the steps, screaming, until there was no more anger left and there was nothing to do but sob. I remember the cropped elm trees leading down to the waterfront, dripping in the rain. I tried to get my lover to pull strings, but he’d lost interest in me by that point, I think. He’d come to see me as a liability. Two weeks later he dumped me, at the tea shop in the Party department store. His wife had somehow found out about my pregnancy. He said that if I didn’t keep my mouth shut and go quietly he’d have my housing reallocated. I’d become damaged goods. I’d damaged his conscience.

I kept my mouth shut. When I could eventually see a gynaecologist he took one look and said that he hoped I never planned to have children. He was a stubbly man who smelt of vodka, so I didn’t believe him. There was some iron cow of a counsellor there, who said it was an old bourgeois conceit that dictated the only role in life for women was to provide for capitalists to exploit, but I told her I didn’t need her advice and I walked out. A year later, I read about my lover’s heart attack in Pravda.

I tell Rudi that I take the pill, because he made it known pretty early on that he thought condoms were only fit for animals. Who knows what can happen in Switzerland? The air is clean there, and the water pure. Maybe Swiss gynaecologists can do things that Russian ones can’t. A little girl, half-Rudi, half-me, running around in the wildflowers. Ah, she’ll be beautiful. And then there’ll be a younger brother, and Rudi can teach him how to hunt in the mountains while I teach our little Kitten how to cook. We’re going to learn how to make bird’s nest soup, which Jerome says they eat in China.

Head Curator Rogorshev seems to have been avoiding me today, even though tonight’s the night of our regular liaison. Fine by me. The Delacroix will be our last picture — Rudi promised. Rudi says he’s beginning to tie up loose business ends. He says he can’t do it overnight, and of course I understand. Rudi explained the situation to Gregorski, and tolerated no ‘ifs’ or ‘buts’, so Gregorski had no choice but to bow down. If necessary, Rudi said, I can go on ahead and stay in the best hotel in Switzerland for a few weeks until he can join me. That would be nice. I could surprise him by buying the chalet first and having it ready for when he’s sold his assets for the best possible price. As well as his pizza place — and, of course, the modelling agency that I work in when I’m not doing the Hermitage — he runs a taxi company, a construction company, an import–export business, has a share in a gym and is a sleeping partner for a group of nightclubs, where he handles security and insurance and such things. Rudi’s a friend of the President. The President said that Rudi is one of the new breed of Russians who are navigating the New Russia through the choppy waters of the new century.

My gallery is empty again. I stroll over to the window. Giant gulls are shouldering the wind. The weather will soon be changing for the worse. I admire my reflection in the glass. It’s true, what Rudi said last night, after we’d made love for the third time: as I age, I get younger. It’s not an everyday beauty I have, out of a powder compact or shampoo bottle. It’s more molecular than that. Wide, luscious lips, and a neck with curves that my admiral compared to a swan’s. After dallying with platinum hair, I returned to my native auburn, the bronze of tribal jewellery. I got my looks from my mother, though Christ knows she gave me nothing else. My talents as an actress and dancer I must have inherited from some illustrious, forgotten, ancestor. My eyes, deep sea green, I inherited from my father, who, in his day, was a famous movie director, now deceased. He never acknowledged me publicly. I choose not to let his name be known. I respect his wishes. Anyway, my eyes. Rudi says he could dive into them and never resurface. Did you know, I entered the Leningrad Academy of Arts as an actress? Doubtless — if I’d chosen to — I could have gone all the way to the top. My Politburo lover discovered me there, in the early stage of my career, and we entered the wider stage of society life together. We used to dance the tango. I can still dance, but Rudi prefers discos. I find them a bit common. Full of sluts and tarts who are only interested in men for their power and money. The Swiss have more class. In Switzerland, Rudi will beg me to teach him.

Jerome can’t bear the sight of his own reflection, he once confessed after drinking a bottle of cheap sherry, and he’s never owned a mirror. I asked him why. He told me that whenever he looks into one he sees a man inside it, and thinks, ‘Who in God’s name are you?’

The serpent is still there, coiled snug round the warty tree—

Christ above!

My dream’s just come back to me.

I was hiding in a tunnel. There was something evil down there, somewhere. Two people ran past, both slitty-eyed, a man and a woman. The man wanted to save the woman from the evil. He had grabbed her arm and they were running, faster than gas in air currents. I followed them, because the man seemed to know the way out, but then I lost track. I found myself on a bare hill with a sky smeared with oil paint and comets and chimes. I realised I was looking at the foot of the cross. There were the dice that the Romans had been using to divide Jesus’ clothes. As I looked, the cross started sinking. There was the nail, hammered clean through Jesus’ feet. His thighs, creamy and bloodless as alabaster. The loincloth, the wound in His side, the arms outstretched and the hands hammered in, and there staring straight back at me was the grinning face of the devil, and in that moment I knew that Christianity had been one horrible, sick, two-thousand-year-old joke.

Gutbucket Barbara Petrovich came to take my place while I went for a tea-break. As usual, she said not a word. Pious and holier-than-thou, just like my mother on her deathbed. I walked down my marbled hallways. A shuffler with a guidebook garbled at me in a foreign language, but I ignored it. Past my dragons of jade and blood-red stone, through my domed chambers of gold leaf, under my Olympian gods, there’s Mercury, living by his wits, down long rooms of blue sashes and silver braid and mother-of-pearl inlaid tables and velvet slippers, and down sooty back stairs and anterooms and into the murky staff canteen, where Tatyana was stirring chocolate powder into warm milk, all alone.

‘Hello, Tatyana! You’ve been exiled here too?’

‘I take my break whenever I choose. Chocolate? Forget your waistline for today. Put some sugar into your blood.’

‘Ah, go on then. What the hell.’ I sat down, felt too hot, stood up and the legs of my chair shrieked against the tiles. I opened the windows through the iron bars, but it didn’t make much difference. Outside and inside were the same. There was a tank in the square outside, and lots of people moving very slowly. The outer edges of a whirlpool.

‘You seem a little agitated today, Margarita,’ ventured Tatyana.

I longed to tell her about Switzerland. I longed to tell her everything, and I almost did. ‘Really? I’ve been thinking about taking a little holiday, as a matter of fact... Maybe abroad... I don’t know where...’

Tatyana lit me a cigarette. Her fingers were beautiful.

We listened to the drone of a distant boiler, and the slosh of a cleaner’s mop in the corridor outside. I wondered if Tatyana was a pianist, with fingers like that.

‘It’s strange and it makes me sad,’ I thought aloud, ‘that a place carries on without you after you’ve left.’

Tatyana nodded. ‘It’s the world slapping you in the face and saying, “Look, honeybunch, I get along without you very well.” The sea does the same thing, but nobody lives there. It hurts more if it’s a place where you’ve grown up, or worked, or fallen in love.’

Tatyana’s chocolate sweetened my tongue to its roots. ‘Sometimes I imagine that I’ll walk out into the corridor and bump into an eighteenth-century Count of Archangel.’

Tatyana laughed. ‘And what does the Count of Archangel want with Margarita Latunsky?’

‘Well, it depends. Sometimes he wants me to show him the way to the Empress’s chambers for a tryst. Sometimes he wants to paint me in oils, and hang me in his gallery. Other times he wants to drag me back to his four-poster bed, to ravish me so utterly that I can’t walk for three days.’

‘Do you ever put up a struggle?’

And I laughed. A tap started dripping in the back kitchen.

‘You appear to imagine a lot of things.’

‘Rudi says so too.’

‘Who’s Rudi?’

‘My friend.’

Tatyana crossed her legs, and I heard her tights rustle. ‘Your man?’

I like Tatyana being curious about me. I like Tatyana. ‘In a manner of speaking...’

‘What does he do?’ Tatyana finds Margarita Latunsky worthy of her curiosity.

‘He’s a local businessman.’

‘Oh, him! You mentioned him when we went out last week...’

‘I did?’

Tatyana uncrossed her legs, and I heard her tights rustle. ‘Sure... but go on, tell me all about him...’

‘There’s a storm closing in.’

I nodded. A cavern-pool quietness.

‘Tatyana, you didn’t mean it the other day when you said that love doesn’t exist?’

‘I’m sorry it upset you so much.’

‘No, you didn’t upset me. But I’ve been thinking. If there’s no love, what keeps love in a different cage from evil?’

‘I knew you had promise, the moment I saw you. That is an astute question.’

‘You told me a secret. Can you keep a secret about me?’

‘I am one.’

‘I’m a lapsed Christian. My mother used to smuggle me into clandestine services when I was a teenager. Before Brezhnev died, you understand. If you were caught, two years prison, straight out. Even owning a Bible was illegal.’

Tatyana wasn’t looking remotely surprised.

‘I guess this isn’t really a secret, it’s more of a story. I remember a sermon. A traveller went on a journey with an angel. They entered a house with many floors. The angel opened one door, and in it was a room with one long low bench running around the walls, crammed with people. In the centre was a table piled with sweetmeats. Each guest had a very long silver spoon, as long as a man is tall. They were trying to feed themselves, but of course they couldn’t — the spoons were too long, and the food kept falling off. So in spite of there being enough food for everyone, everyone was hungry. “This,” explained the angel, “is hell. The people do not love each other. They only want to feed themselves.”

‘Then the angel took the traveller to another room. It was exactly the same as the first, only this time instead of trying to feed themselves, the guests used their spoons to feed one another, across the room. “Here,” said the angel, “the people think only of one another. And by doing so, they feed themselves. Here is heaven.”’

Tatyana thought for a moment. ‘There’s no difference.’

‘No difference?’

‘No difference. Everybody both in heaven and hell wanted one and the same thing: meat in their bellies. But those in heaven got their shit together better. That’s all.’ And she laughed, but I couldn’t. My expression made Tatyana add, ‘I’m truly sorry, Margarita...’

The minutes are hauling themselves by like a shot Hollywood gangster crawling down a corridor.

I know my Rudi’s business sometimes demands a tough line, but there’s a difference between assertiveness and violence, just as there’s a difference between a businessman and a gangster. I never delude myself. My Rudi can adopt a very direct manner. But what do people expect if they default on legitimate loans? Rudi can’t give money away, he’s not a charity. People understand the terms when they take on the loans, and if they don’t keep their end of the bargain, then my Rudi is quite within his rights to take whatever action is necessary to ensure that he and his partners are not out of pocket at the end of the day. It’s incredible how some people find that so hard to understand. I remember about two years ago, shortly after Rudi agreed to move in with me, he came back late one night with a knife gash down his neck the length of a pencil. A loan defaulter, he’d explained. Blood was oozing out, thick and sticky like toothpaste. Rudi refused to go to hospital, so I had to staunch the bleeding myself, with one of my ripped-up cotton blouses. The hospitals are for the needy, he said. He’s so brave.

After that night, Rudi got himself a gun, and I got myself some bandages.

Clouds and the distant Alps in the blue afternoon, ice cream and eiderdown. It was siesta time in the Garden of Eden, the drowsiness was murmury in the groves. Insects wound up and unwound. Eve was coming to a decision.

‘Ask your desire what you want,’ hissed the snake.

‘It’s a big step. Exile, menstruation, toil, childbirth. I’ve got one last question.’

‘Fire away,’ said the serpent.

‘Why do you hate God?’

The serpent smiled, and painted spirals in the air, down onto Eve’s lap. ‘Be so good as to tickle my throat, would you, my dear? Yess, I knew...’

Eve loved the flecks of emerald and ruby in the serpent’s golden scales. ‘Then give me an astute answer.’

‘That fruit you’re holding, Eve, that plump, juicing, yielding buttock of fruit, in its flesh you are going to discover all the knowledge you desire. Why do I hate God? Zoroastra, Manichean heresies, Jungian archetypes, Thingysky’s pyramid, virtual particles, from whence serpentine sybillance, immortality... Why do things happen the way they do? All you have to do...’ The serpent’s eyes whirlpooled like the kaleidoscopes of Nostradamus, ‘...is to wrap your soft lipsss around the juicy beauty, bite hard, and see what happens!’

Eve closed her eyes and opened her mouth.

An ambassadorial convoy just graced my Delacroix gallery. Ambassadors are idiots who possess only one skill: outkowtowing one another at official functions. I know. I saw enough in action in my power-politics days. There was the Head of Security, a Cultural Attaché, The Director of the Winter Palace, Head Curator Rogorshev — who pretended not to notice me — a multi-lingual translator and eight ambassadors. I knew which countries they were from because I’d typed the invitations myself. The French one I could tell straight off because he kept interrupting the translator to point things out to everyone else. The German one kept looking at his watch. I caught the Italian one looking at my breasts and neck. The British one kept nodding politely at the pictures and saying ‘Delightful’, the American was videoing the tour as though he owned the place, and the Australian kept taking crafty swigs from his hip flask. That left the Belgian and the Dutch ambassadors, and I couldn’t tell one from the other but who cares anyway? They each had their own bodyguard. God knows why anyone thought these nonentities needed bodyguards. I’ve known a fair few in my time, too. Much more fun than ambassadors.

The air-conditioner judders on. Its innards sound queasy.

Tatyana whisked me onwards, but the Thewlicker’s goose between her legs flew faster than mine, and vanished honking down a fire escape, a sooty pot-holder swinging from its foot. Catherine the Great sailed by on a royal barge. She was decomposing and full of holes and muddy, but I had a bottle of extra virgin olive oil which I poured into her orifices. Light shone out of her and she sat up, fully restored.

‘Ma’am,’ I curtsied.

‘Ah, Margarita, and how are we tonight? The Count of Archangel asked us to convey his felicitations, and gratitude. We gather you rendered him some assistance the other night.’

‘It was my pleasure, your majesty.’

‘One last eeny-weeny thing, Miss Latunsky.’

‘Majesty?’

‘We know that you’re spiriting our pictures away from under our very noses. We are prepared to overlook your misdemeanours to date. We’re the same breed, you and us, Miss Latunsky. We admire your sense of style. Heaven only knows, in this world a woman has to take opportunity by the horns whenever it comes calling, but we are warning you. Plots are being hatched in the palace. The time has come to cut and run. If you take another picture, the price will be pain and anguish beyond your imaginings.’

I woke up with a start to see a peeping Tom staring at me.

‘What do you think you’re staring at, you faggot?’

He zigzagged off, looking over his shoulder once or twice.

I don’t understand why I’m so drowsy today. It must be this weather, this storm that refuses to break. It’s like being locked in a cleaning cupboard.

Rudi and I have always enjoyed a very liberal relationship. Don’t be fooled by appearances! He’s an uncut diamond, and the love we have for each other runs deep, strong, and true. The lovers I took before Rudi were older men, who used to protect and nurture me. I won’t deny that Rudi brings out a maternal streak in me. But the bullshit that says a woman has to be one man’s slave and never even look at another man, that died out with my mother’s two-faced generation and good riddance! If she really believed that, where did I come from? Both Rudi and I go on dates with other people: quite informally, and it doesn’t mean anything. In Rudi’s work, escorts are often a necessary part of the right image. I don’t mind. He couldn’t conduct his business if he didn’t have the right image. It’s not that I’m getting too old to go with Rudi or anything, it’s just that I’ve done all that scene before, and frankly, it bores me. Usually, Rudi introduces me to some of his gentleman friends, always men of the very highest predigree, and always very rich, as you’d expect. Rudi knows that I used to be a social firefly, and doesn’t like to see me fester in our little home. Rudi’s friends are often in town on business, and they just want a little feminine company to show them around. Rudi knows how gifted I am at handling men, and making them feel at ease. They always express their appreciation to Rudi in a financial dimension, and sometimes Rudi insists that I take some expenses for my time too, though God knows, that’s not what I’m interested in. It doesn’t mean anything. Rudi knows he is the centre of my world, and I know that I am the centre of his.

The evening is waiting in Head Curator Rogorshev’s office. I have the windows open, and the electric fan on, but my sweaty lingerie is still sticking to my skin. The tip of my cigarette glows in the gloom.

Nemya, my little cat, will want to be fed. But Rudi won’t be back yet, and Mr Suhbataar never answers the telephone. Mr Suhbataar. He’s a strange man. I’ve barely seen him. Once I got used to the shock of his sudden arrival a week ago, things worked out all right. He’s quieter than Nemya, and often when I think he isn’t at home I’ll pass by him on the way to the kitchen, or when I think he is at home I’ll knock on his door, and there’s nobody in. I’ve never seen him eat anything, I’ve never even seen him use the toilet! He drinks, though, glass after glass of milk. When he shuts a door there’s no sound. And when I ask him about his family or about Mongolia, he’ll give answers which don’t sound evasive at the time, but when I sit down and think about what he said later I realise that he’s told me absolutely nothing. I have strong powers of insight and intuition, and my grandmother possessed the power to place curses. So I can usually see right through people, but it’s as though Mr Suhbataar is invisible in the first place. He is handsome, in a slight, hawkish, semi-Oriental way. I wonder what kind of woman he likes? Savage Wild Asian, or Refined Lacy European? Assuming he likes women, and he’s not another Jerome. No. He’s real man. I wonder what Mongolia’s like. I must ask him before he leaves.

The telephone goes. I let the Head Curator’s new answerphone take the call.

‘Margarita? It’s Rogorshev Rabbit. Are you there? Pick up the phone... don’t be cross with me, you know how much it cuts me up...’ I can’t be bothered. Another cigarette. ‘I forgot to tell you. It’s my wife’s anniversary. I promised her I’d take her and the kids to some new movie. Some nonsense about dinosaurs... I’m sorry, my fairy cake... Next week? Are you there? No? Okay... Well, I hope you get this message...’

I see. So, I did my make-up for nothing. Waste of time. Waste of money. Men don’t know how expensive decent cosmetics are. I hope there’s a fire in the cinema and all the little Rogorshevs turn into potato crisps. I can crunch them to crumbs, like I will their father.

The Head of Security was reading the sports pages, chewing a brick-sized sandwich that dripped red jam. The tinny radio was on in the background. ‘Good evening, Madame Latunsky,’ he said silkily. ‘How was your day? Quiet?’ He groped down his pants to re-position his balls. ‘Or were you tied up with business in our Head Curator’s office?’

Fat bastard. ‘Did your ambassadors have a nice time?’

‘Oh yes, yes, dare say we gave them something to brag about with their mistresses.’ He looked at me for just a moment too long.

I lit a cigarette. You are going down, Fatso. Enjoy it while it lasts, because you are going to be in prison by the end of the month. ‘Floor-polishing night, next week. The head of the cleaning company phoned Head Curator Rogorshev’s office just now to confirm. Usual time. It seems he’ll be coming along again himself this month, just to make sure the waxing machines run smoothly.’

The Head of Security swivelled round on his squeaky chair to look at the office blackboard. ‘Right you are.’

I knock Rudi’s stupid code on my own door, but there’s nobody home. No Mr Suhbataar, no Rudi, not even little Nemya. I take a shower to wash away the day’s grime and the make-up. Green eye shadow and apricot blusher lost down the plug-hole. The bathroom is much cleaner than usual: Mr Suhbataar always cleans up after himself. He even cleans up after me. I don’t trust men who clean up after themselves. Jerome’s another one. Give me a slob like Rudi, any day. I force myself to eat a boiled egg, and sit down by the window to watch the canal. A pleasure craft chugs into view, with a cargo of tourists. I see my son and daughter amongst them, laughing at something I can’t see. Blond-haired toddlers. I want to go out but I can’t think where. I have many close friends, of course, all over the city. Or I could hop on the overnight train to Moscow and stay with some of my friends from my theatre days there. I haven’t been to Moscow for years. They are always clamouring for me to visit, but I tell them, it’s a question of time. I can invite them to Switzerland when I’m settled, of course. They can stay in the guest chalet I’m going to have built. They’ll be green with envy! I’ve decided to live near a waterfall, so I can drink fresh water from the glaciers every day. St Petersburg water contains so many metals it’s almost magnetic. I’ll keep hens. Why am I crying?

What’s wrong with me tonight? Maybe I need a man. I could put on that pair of unladdered red fishnet tights, slip into the new black velvet suit Rudi got me as an extra birthday present last week — and go and pick up some young boy with a motorbike, in a leather jacket and with thick black hair and a powerful jaw... just for fun. I haven’t done that for a long time. Rudi wouldn’t mind, especially if he didn’t know about it. I said, we have a modern give-and-take relationship.

But no. I only want Rudi. I want Rudi’s shoulders, and his hands, and his smell, and his belt. I want to feel Rudi’s lunges, even if it hurts a little. Look at the rooftops, spires, cupolas, factory chimneys... Rudi is out there somewhere, thinking about me.

From Lapland comes a front of thunder, and when I look to where the night melts into the storm, I see a lick of lightning, and I wonder where my little Nemya could have got to.

I stood in a well of moonlight. The stairs wound up to my apartment. Way, way past midnight. Not dark, not light, bats flickered here and there, specks in a sky of old film. The courtyard was silted up with menace. As usual, the lift wasn’t working, though it gave me a hell of an electric shock when I tried to pull the door open. I didn’t know you got electric shocks at night. For the fiftieth time since Rudi had driven off with the Delacroix in the back of his cleaning van, I told myself everything was fine. My new life was about to begin. For the fiftieth time I felt there was something wrong. Something had been wrong all week. What is who trying to tell me? I lit another cigarette. Nobody was stirring. See? There was nothing wrong, and to prove it I didn’t hurry up to my apartment, but stayed for a moment to smoke a last cigarette.

The switch between the fake and the real Delacroix had gone like clockwork. Almost.

I’d met Rudi and three rent-a-granny cleaners at the goods entrance at exactly 8 in the evening. Gutbucket Petrovich, still in that ghastly uniform she wears, and two of her cronies were there to supervise them. I was the fourth Hermitage employee. When I arrived they all stopped talking. So utterly obvious. While I was allotting corridors and handing floor-plans to the women, I thought Gutbucket Petrovich was about to break her vow of silence and say something, but she bit her tongue at the last moment. Wise. The Head of Security was playing cards in the lodge with his bat-faced brother-in-law. He nodded briefly at Rudi, and waved us through. Rudi and his cleaners wheeled their cumbersome floor-polishing contraptions in different directions, one guard per cleaner. I went with Rudi.

We didn’t say a word. Rudi and I make a great team. When he’s happy, he’ll say that to me, like the time I attended his birthday party at the Petersburg Hilton Banquet Halls. When nobody was looking, he chinked our champagne glasses and whispered, ‘Babe, you and I make a great team.’

When we exchanged a picture in the winter, we had to work in the weak electric lights of the Winter Palace. In the bright summer twilight we could leave the lights off. I stood guard in the corridor outside the Delacroix gallery, while Rudi unlocked and clicked open the compartment specially built into the base of the machine. He slid Jerome’s forgery out, and leaned it against a half-moon table, inset with lotus flowers and orchids of jade and amber.

There was no noise but the drone of the other machines in the distance.

Rudi reached up and unhooked the real Delacroix, and slid it into the compartment, locking it shut again. I thought about Eve and the serpent, making their getaway together.

I heard stout footsteps marching this way.

‘Rudi!’

The serpent’s poison sacs back-flooded, and venom dribbled up.

Rudi stiffened and stared at me.

I felt locked in and left behind.

I’d been mistaken. A hammering in a false wall. No, nothing.

And the echo of that drone.

Rudi unfroze, frowning at me. Then he hung Jerome’s fake in the empty space.

I believe I would have sold my soul for a cigarette.

Rudi then started waxing the seventeenth-century portrait corridors, pushing the noisy handlebarred contraption up and down the long passages, up as far as the cubist pictures of cut-up instruments. The gardener in our Swiss gardens will mow my lawns in the same way. I watched Rudi, outwardly as bored as a gallery attendant. I wanted to help him, but it would have looked suspicious. Inwardly I was aching for the hours to topple, quickly, so we could leave this ghastly palace and the treasure would be truly ours. I yielded to temptation and imagined promenading through Zurich’s plushest department stores, a train of attendants wrapping the objects I indicate in polka-dotted wrapping paper and gold ribbon. Then I imagined being nibbled and ravished by Rudi in the truffle department.

At midnight Rudi’s new Italian chronometer beeped and he switched off the waxing machine. We returned to the goods entrance. On the way down Rudi smiled at me. ‘Soon, babe, very soon,’ and he smiled the smile our son will smile. I bit my lip and imagined the clothes I would dress him in. ‘You can bang me up later,’ I whispered. In his lodge, the Head of Security was asleep, his legs splayed and his snores acquatic. Two of Rudi’s cleaners were there, complaining about their bones, complaining about the weather, complaining about the waxing machines. I pray that Rudi will put me to sleep before I get to that point. We watched the Head of Security for a minute or so, until Gutbucket Petrovich came with her cleaner. Gutbucket Petrovich poked him awake.

He blinked and hauled himself to his feet. ‘What?’

‘We’re all done here, officer,’ said Rudi.

‘Then go home, then.’

‘And what about conducting the body searches?’ prodded Gutbucket Petrovich. “Regulation 15d: All ancillary staff, including gallery attendants, must undergo compulsory body searches upon leaving the—”’

The Head of Security squelched out his nose into a tissue, which he lobbed at the wastepaper basket. He missed. ‘Don’t quote the regulations at me. I know what’s in the regulations. I wrote the bloody regulations.’

‘I refuse to have his hands anywhere near me,’ said the oldest cleaner, rearing up. ‘And if you say he can,’ she warned Rudi, ‘I’ll take what you owe me and resign.’

Granny Cleaner Number Two advanced in solidarity. ‘Same here. I refuse to be treated like a tart in a police cell.’

‘It’s the regulations,’ snarled Gutbucket Petrovich, ‘you have no choice.’

Jesus, it’s not like anyone’s asking you to sleep with the knobbly troll.

Rudi turned on the charm, the rogue. ‘Ladies, ladies, ladies. The solution is obvious. The Head of Security here can body-search me, while one of his female members of staff — perhaps this—’ Rudi gestured at Gutbucket — ‘zealous member... can body-search you. Then we can all go home to an honest night’s sleep at the end of an honest day’s labour. And Rudi always pays what he owes. Are we agreed?’

After the body searches we loaded two of the waxing machines into the back of the van. The three cleaners and two of the guards had gone home. Rudi was in the Head of Security’s office getting his billet signed and countersigned in triplicate in green biro. Gutbucket Petrovich lingered like a bad smell, hatching some new scheme. The last signature was scrawled off, and Rudi folded up the papers.

‘How do we know,’ said Gutbucket Petrovich to the Head of Security, ‘that he hasn’t hidden a painting in one of the waxing machines?’

Christ above. A poison thorn slid in, bent, and snapped.

But Rudi just sighed, and addressed the Head of Security. ‘Who is this woman? Your new boss?’

‘I’m a government employee,’ snarled Gutbucket Petrovich, ‘paid to protect our cultural heritage from thieves!’

‘Fine,’ said Rudi, still not looking at her. ‘First, search the galleries. Second, locate the missing pictures that my internationally notorious gallery thieves, cunningly disguised as groaning grannies, have spirited away from under the very noses of your own guards while they blinked. Third, dismantle each of my machines, screw by screw, onto sheets of newspaper by moonlight. Then put them back together. Perfectly, mind you, or I’ll sue big time. Great idea. You are lucky to have such a fastidious public servant ruling your roost. I’ll be adding overtime to my invoice. Under the terms of the contract I have with Head Curator Rogorshev, I clocked off at 12 sharp. You’ll forgive me if I sit down, help myself to your newspaper and phone my wife to tell her that I won’t be home for another eight hours?’

Rudi sat down, and unfolded the newspaper.

My heart beat at least twenty times in the few seconds that followed.

‘That won’t be necessary,’ said the Head of Security, staring daggers at Gutbucket Petrovich. ‘The Head of Security makes these kinds of decisions. Not a gallery attendant supervisor.’

Rudi stood up. ‘Very glad to hear it.’ He barged past Gutbucket Petrovich, who was left to stew in her own juices — the only juices that she’d ever know in her lifetime. Through the door of the porter’s lodge I could see Rudi trundling the third waxing machine into the back of his van, still in the loading bay. I noticed he’d left his papers on the desk, so that I could pick them up, and follow him. We’re a team of professionals. Sure enough, he was waiting for me in the back of the van.

‘Babe,’ he muttered, ‘I’m going to go to Jerome’s first, to drop off the painting. I’ll be back later. There’s one or two of Gregorski’s people I need to see first.’

‘Suhbataar?’

‘Never mind who. I’ll see you soon.’

‘I love you.’ What else could I have said?

The backs of his fingers brushed my breasts. He jumped down to get the last waxing machine. The one with the Delacroix hidden in its undercarriage, still in the loading bay. So close now, so close.

‘Well, you must be very pleased with yourself, Latunsky.’ Gutbucket Petrovich’s head and shoulders appeared in the loading door of the van.

Why choose now to stop ignoring me? ‘Why! It can talk, after all.’

She rolled up a strip of chewing gum, put it in, and bit down hard. She folded her arms. ‘Do you really think a nobody like you is going to get away with this?’

‘I have no idea what you think you’re talking about.’

She smirked as she chewed. I wondered what to do. How could she know? ‘Drop the ham acting, Latunsky. Everyone knows about the little game you’re running here.’

Behind her, out of sight of the gloom of the lodge, Rudi had picked up a monkey wrench and was walking up very slowly behind her, his forefinger over his lips. My mind raced ahead, saw the steel flashing down onto her skull — I felt — I don’t know what I felt — keep her talking, keep her talking, I felt afraid, a part of me even wanting to warn her, but another part of me felt warm and hungry. Don’t move a muscle, bitch. Bunnykins is coming.

‘And what little game would that be?’ We would dump her body in the marshes out towards Finland...

‘Stop playing games! You’re lousy at it! I’m talking about your little scheme to pull yourself up into the high life, of course!’ That look in Rudi’s eyes, bad cocaine. Gutbucket thinks she has me on the run. Ravens would come and peck out those beady eyes of hers. Wild dogs would fight over her belly, arse and thighs, the stronger getting the juicier cuts. Her life is in my hands, and she doesn’t even know it... I no longer want her to run away, and I have to stop myself laughing. She’s still chewing, her fat face, badly in need of an expensive beautician. ‘You’re after Head Curator’s job, aren’t you? Sleeping your way into his office chair! You’re just a shameless whore, Latunsky. That’s what you’ve always been and that’s all you ever will be.’

Rudi lowered the monkey wrench, and I laughed, and spat at her. That got rid of her.

I finished my cigarette. Even the bats had gone. What was wrong now?

Nothing, that was what. I checked my watch: 2.24 a.m. The picture would be safely stowed at Jerome’s, Suhbataar would be handing over the cash from the buyers, and I could start packing for Switzerland. After all these years I was finally getting out! In the iron curtain years Switzerland was as near in dreams and far in fact as the Emerald City. I attacked the rest of the stairs. It was natural I should be jittery. I’d just stolen a painting worth half a million dollars.

I knocked Rudi’s code on my front door, just to please him. But there was no reply. Well. I hadn’t expected one. He’d be home soon.

In my hallway I clicked the light-switch, but the bulb had broken. I clicked a switch further down the hallway, but the second light also wasn’t working. Odd. The electricity must be down. But I didn’t really need electricity tonight, anyway. The White Nights were here, and the sky over towards Europe was lit by perpetual dusk and the milky way. I walked into my living room, saw my coffee table with its legs in the air and my nerves snapped like a string of cat-gut.

My room had been wrecked.

The shelves yanked off the walls, the TV smashed, the vases flung to the ground. The drawers ripped out, the contents hurled across the room. The pictures methodically pulled apart and tossed aside, one by one. My clothes foraged through and ripped to ribbons. Shards of glass littered the carpet like dinosaur teeth.

Who would want to do this to me?

All this destruction, all this silence.

Oh God, not Rudi. Was he safe? Had he been taken?

A corner of shadow was twitching under the wreck of the dining table. I felt my throat constricting and refusing to swallow. My eyes strained to read the swarmy dark. The corner of shadow was a pool of blood, blackened by the twilight — I recognised the tiniest of whimpers—

Oh my God oh my God Nemya, not dear little Nemya. I crouched and peered under the table. There was a mesh of torn roots where one of her hind legs should have been. I think she was too close to death to be in pain. Her eyes looked back at me, calm as a Buddha on a hill somewhere, outstaring the sun. She died, leaving me falling alone, unable to see the bottom.

An awful form was floating down the Neva from the marshes. Lazily, on its back, until it reached Alexandra Nevskogo Bridge. It would crawl up a support, and haul its stumps and teeth through the streets, looking for me.

What do I do? What do you always do? ‘Ask your desire!’ orders the serpent.

I went into the bedroom, and telephoned Rudi’s mobile phone number, the one for emergencies. The static hiss sounded like the crashing of waves, or the noise of many coins falling? Thank God, the call connected. I blurted out, ‘Rudi, they’ve turned the flat over—’

A woman’s voice was talking back. A cold, metallic one. Smug as Gutbucket’s.

‘The number you have dialled has been disconnected.’

‘Christ above! Reconnect it, you frigging whore!’

‘The number you have dialled has been disconnected.’

‘The number you have dialled has been disconnected.’

What?

I put down the receiver. What next? Desires. I wanted Switzerland, and Rudi, and our children. So I needed the Delacroix painting. That simple. Rudi will be proud of me. ‘Babe,’ he’ll say, ‘I knew I could rely on you.’

I telephoned Jerome.

‘Hello, my dear. A shplendid evening’sh work.’ His voice was woozy with alcohol.

‘Jerome, have you seen Rudi?’

‘Of coursh, he left here only twenty minutes ago after dropping off the latest addition to our family. My word, she is a beauty, isn’t she? Hey, did I ever tell you about Delacroix’s fling with the nephew of—’

‘Has Suhbataar come yet?’

‘No. The Great Khan telephoned to say he would be arriving shortly — did you know that in the thirteenth century, the Mongolians used to seal their captives in airtight containers and conduct feasting atop the box, listening to the sounds of suffocation—’

‘Jerome, shut up. I’m coming over now. We have to move out.’

‘But my dear, that’s scheduled for tomorrow. And after everything I’ve done I think I deserve not to be told to shut up like I was a—’

‘Tomorrow has to happen now! My place has been done over. I can’t get hold of Rudi. My—’ my cat has been killed, and I felt it move nearer down the river, ‘something’s going wrong. It’s all going wrong. I’m coming over for the painting now. Pack it.’

I hung up. What did I want?

I reached through the rip in the underside of the bedframe — thank you, Jesus! I untaped the loaded revolver. Guns are heavier than they look, and colder. I put it in my handbag and left. I came back for my passport, and left again.

It’s true, it’s harder to get a taxi when you need one, and if you’re desperate, forget it. I walked. I shoved whatever it was that I mustn’t think about back upstream, but it kept floating down. I focused on the little things around me. I remember the cobbles on Gorokhovaya Street. I remember the smoothness of the girl’s skin, as she kissed her boy on the steps of the bronze horseman. I remember the heads of the flowers in cellophane around St Isaac’s Cathedral. I remember the tail-lights of the planes as they took off from Pulkovo airport, bound for Hong Kong or London or New York or Zurich. I remember the mauve silk of a laughing woman. I remember the maroon of a leather flying jacket. I remember the crunched-up form of a homeless person, sleeping in a coffin of cardboard. Little things. It’s all made of little things that you don’t ordinarily notice. My jaw muscles were killing me.

Jerome’s door was bolted from the inside. I banged it so loud that I set off a dog in another part of the building.

Jerome flung it open, pulled me in, and hissed. ‘Shut up!’ He locked the door and ran back over to where he was packing the picture with sheets of cardboard and brown tape and string. A suitcase was already packed, lying open on the sofa. Socks, underpants, vests, cheap vodka, a Wedgwood teapot. There was an empty bottle of gin on its side in his jukebox drinks cabinet.

I stood perfectly still. What should I do? What did I want? ‘I’m taking the picture.’

Jerome barked a laugh. He didn’t even bother to look up. ‘Are you indeed?’

‘Yes. I’m taking the picture. You see, it’s Rudi’s and my future.’

I don’t even think Jerome heard me. He was crouching over the package with his back to me. ‘Make yourself useful, my dear, and put your thumb on this bit of string while I tighten it up.’

I didn’t move. ‘I’m taking the picture!’ When Jerome turned round to ask me again he found himself looking straight into the eye of my gun. His face lost its composure and then regained it.

‘This isn’t the movies. You’re not going to use that on me. You know you’re not. Not without your puppetmaster pimp to tell you what to do. You couldn’t even shoot it straight. Now be a sensible lady, and put it down.’

I had a gun. He didn’t. So. ‘Stand away from my picture, Jerome. Go and lock yourself in your studio and you won’t get hurt.’

Jerome looked at me gently. ‘My dear, what we have here is a reality gap. It’s my picture. I painted the forgery, remember. My talents have allowed us to get this far. All you did was get undressed, lie back and open wide. Let’s face it, that’s par for the course in your line of work.’

‘Nemya died.’

‘Who’s Nemya?’

‘Nemya! Nemya, my little cat!’

‘I’m very sorry that your cat died. Truly, I’ll weep buckets for your kitty when the time comes to pay my respects, but if you will kindly put that nasty little toy away and piss off so I can finish packing my picture — do you hear me, my dear? My picture — and catch a plane out of your squalid, lying, violent, sub-zero anus of a country for which not so long ago I traded in my entire damned future—’

‘I don’t know what a reality gap is. But I know what a gun is. It’s my picture. And another thing, my name is not “My Dear”. My name is Margarita Latunsky.’

‘Evidently, my words have failed to penetrate your make-up and hairdo, you encrusted tart—’ He strode towards me, hand outstretched ready to grab—

‘It’s MY picture!’ banged the gun. Jerome’s head flipped back with enough force to lift him off his feet. Beautiful red blood splattered the ceiling. I heard it. Splatter. Jerome was still spinning, as though he’d slipped on a banana skin.

‘Margarita Latunsky,’ insisted the silence, without raising its voice.

Jerome thumped to the floor, half his face missing. Killing is a sensation, like abortion or birth, that you can never accurately imagine. Odd. What next?

‘My compliments, Miss Latunsky,’ said Suhbataar, shutting the kitchen door softly behind him. ‘Straight through his eye. Something else we have in common.’

Suhbataar?

‘Where’s Rudi?’

‘Near by.’ He smiled, and I saw dark gold. I hadn’t seen his teeth until now.

‘Where?’

‘In the kitchen.’ Suhbataar jerked his thumb over his shoulder.

It’s going to be all right! Tears of relief welled up. We’ll be in Switzerland by tomorrow night! ‘Thank God, thank God, I — I didn’t know — I — Nemya’s dead — Mr Suhbataar, I hope you understand about Jerome...’

‘I understand, Margarita. You did Rudi a favour, too. The English are a devious race. A nation of homosexuals, vegetarians, and third-rate spies. This one—’ Suhbataar shunted Jerome’s half-head over with the tip of his boot — ‘was planning to sell you, me, Rudi, even Mr Gregorski, all up the river.’

Rudi was safe! I ran to the kitchen, and pushed open the door. Rudi was slumped over the kitchen table, still in his cleaning-company overalls. Drunk at a time like this! I love him with every minute of my life, but this is not a good time to hit the vodka!

‘Rudi, darling, wake up now—’

I shook his shoulders and his head tipped up and over at an impossible angle, just like Jerome’s had. I saw his face. My jagged scream ended as abruptly as it had begun. It broke over the city. Yes, it has been falling for a long time. The rumble in my head will never die, until earth kisses my ears and eyes shut. Frothing tapeworms of blood were wriggling free from my lover’s eyes and nostrils. White as suet, white as suet.

Suhbataar spoke from the living room in an unhurried tone. ‘You will have to postpone your sojourn together in Switzerland...’

Gravelly vomit had completely caked up Rudi’s mouth.

‘...permanently. I’m sorry about your boudoir, your chalet and your children.’

Me, this... Rudi, and Suhbataar’s voice, nothing else existed.

‘Rudi!’ Somebody else was speaking for me.

Suhbataar’s voice shrugged. ‘Regrettably, Rudi was planning to sell us up the very same river. Mr Gregorski couldn’t let that happen. He has his reputation to protect. So he called me in, to test everyone’s honesty. The results were less than satisfactory.’

‘No. No.’

‘Mr Gregorski’s suspicions were aroused when your boyfriend “lost” a wall of money he was laundering through a reputable Hong Kong law firm, and the only excuse he could come up with was that his contact there suddenly dropped dead of diabetes! Dishonesty coupled with a lack of invention is fatal for little crooks.’

Something crunched under my shoe. Bits of a syringe.

Hell is tiled. The fridge motor shuddered off.

Logic shrieked in. Maybe there was time. ‘Ambulance!’

‘An ambulance isn’t going to help Rudi, Miss Latunsky. He’s dead. Not just a little bit dead. He’s extremely dead. It would seem that the embittered traitor-forger Jerome laced his celebratory heroin with rat poison.’

His dear eyes. Rudi slid, and slumped off the chair onto the floor. I heard his nose snap. I fled back into the living room, tripped over something and fell to my knees, trying to claw back to yesterday through the pattern in the carpet. It was all too horrible for tears. Something dug between my knuckes. The gun. The gun.

Suhbataar was buttoning up his long leather coat.

Jerome was lying on his back doused in his own blood, just a few paces away.

And Rudi in the kitchen, with a broken nose.

How had all this come about? Only one hour ago we were in the back of a van and I had wanted Rudi inside me.

I heard myself whimpering, like Nemya under the table.

‘Don’t take it so hard,’ said Suhbataar, tucking the package containing the Delacroix under his arm. Why did his voice never alter? Always the same, dry, soft and gritty. ‘Your gang’s been on borrowed time for months. Rudi and Jerome were traitors. Mr Gregorski can’t permit you to walk away. Pawns get sacrificed in endgames. Your Interpol friend Miss Makuch and her Capital Transfer Inspectorate are too close.’

‘What?’

‘Innocuous name for an anti-mafia squad, isn’t it? That reminds me, I gave them an anonymous tip-off via a dead letter-box on Kirovsky Island. They’ll be here in a few minutes. Calm down. Ex-spies are an embarrassment these days, what with the IMF and trade delegations — nobody’s going to throw away the key on you for killing Jerome. The stolen pictures are irreplaceable, but nobody will believe you were the mastermind behind that. Fifteen years at most, out in ten. The prison reform lobby in Moscow is beginning to gain a little ground. Slowly.’

He walked towards the door.

‘Put it down! That’s my picture! That picture belongs to Rudi and me!’

Suhbataar turned, feigning surprise. ‘I don’t think Rudi is going to be dealing in stolen masterpieces for a while.’

‘I want it!’

‘With the greatest respect, Miss Latunsky, you don’t count. You never have.’

What had he said about Tatyana? ‘I’ll tell the police everything about Gregorski!’

Suhbataar shook his head sadly. ‘You’ve become a murderer, Miss Latunsky. Your prints are on the gun, the ballistics match up... Who’s going to listen to you? The only possible corroboration to your whistle-blowing is lying in this apartment, slumped in pools of their own innards.’

Pressing into my knuckles. I still had my gun.

‘If it becomes expedient to oblige you to stop telling stories, Gregorski will know where to find you. Even in Miss Makuch’s division, the level of corruption is startling. Mongolians long ago made corruption a national pastime, but even I’m impressed with you Russians.’

‘Drop the picture now drop it now you son of a bitch or you are dead dead dead dead DEAD! Put it down slowly and put it down now! Hands in the air! You know I can use this thing!’ I aimed the gun straight at where his heart should be.

A weapon men use against women is the refusal to take them seriously.

‘Look at Jerome, you Mongolian fuck, that’s you in ten seconds’ time.’

Suhbataar smiled, an in-joke smile.

Fine. Fine. It will be his death mask. What’s the difference between one murder and two? I pulled the trigger.

The hammer clapped down on an empty chamber. I pulled the trigger again. Nothing. Again. Nothing.

Suhbataar pulled out five golden bullets from his jacket pocket, rattled them in his cage of fingers.

I was left alone staring at the locked door.

None of this happened. None of this really happened.