Moskva

32 Return to Moscow

Tom’s shoulder hurt so brutally he pulled the Ural off the road at a food stall and let the Zil disappear into the distance. Wolfing down half of what in England would be called a vegetable pasty, he tossed the rest into a bin, wiped his fingers on its paper wrapper and washed down four codeine with sour coffee.

About ten miles down the road a pain in his gut joined the one in his shoulder and neither came even close to the ache in his heart. Catching up with the Zil, he tucked himself into its slipstream and went back to mourning Alex. He was trying to remember the party.

What she looked like.

Exactly what she’d said.

He could remember the bloody ballroom, its absurdly ornate chandelier hanging from a duck-egg-blue ceiling like a crystal-wrapped chrysalis. The heavy moulding of the cornices. The plaster panels, some bare, others filled with gilt stucco or dark paintings. All hideous.

He could remember those well enough.

He was doing his best not to cry.

He could remember the balcony door creaking, Alex taking her place beside him, leaning on the stone balustrade and staring at the frozen river.

Got a cigarette? she’d asked.

So young. How in God’s name had he not realized she was that young? The harshness she’d put on the G of Got. The studied insouciance with which she’d taken her place beside him and stared where he stared.

He’d passed her a cigarette without comment.

I’ll need a lighter.

He’d put his Bic on the balustrade and watched it wobble in the wind until she closed her fingers around it. Black nails, he remembered. That jade ring.

These are foul.

She had that right.

With its stub of tobacco only half gone, she’d flicked the papirosa over the edge and they’d watched it plummet to the snow below.

You don’t say much, do you?

Too much and not enough. Always was his problem.

What had brought her out there in the first place? Had she known the balcony was occupied? Had it been as simple as seeing him slip away for a fag break and wanting to cadge a cigarette for herself? Had she expected him to refuse? Had she expected to find herself alone? Or was it all part of winding up her mother and stepfather?

Tom hadn’t asked if they knew, if they’d been told about the body.

In the back of his head, like a video loop, Vladimir Vedenin endlessly smiled and touched her arm. That was what Tom remembered. That was what he remembered most clearly.

Vladimir Vedenin touching her arm.

Not the wind on the balcony and the discarded cigarette. Not her comment about his swearing, which had been made only to force a confrontation.

Vladimir touching her arm.

And the strange, strange expression on his face before she turned to see who it was, when he thought she wasn’t looking.

Had she already made her plans to run away?

Had Vladimir already made his plans to kill the boy she ran to?

For mile after mile, wind whipped tears from Tom’s face and the grey road unravelled in a flat ribbon leading him back to Moscow and the horror waiting for them all at Patriarch’s Ponds. As the very outskirts became simply outskirts, and their little convoy crossed the motorway used almost as a character in Tarkovsky’s Solaris, Tom kept trying to remember Alex.

Dark hair and a wide face, high cheekbones and slightly pointed chin.

How much of the remembering was he making up? How much came from simply having seen photographs of her afterwards? And that conversation? Why would Alex force a confrontation about nothing in a room full of ballgowns and uniforms, people there out of politeness, duty or because it was their job.

Why him? Why then?

Tom struggled to remember who’d been watching.

Mary Batten, certainly. She’d started moving across the moment he grabbed Alex’s arm, then made herself simply watch how the confrontation played out. And below Alex’s cuffs, barely visible in the dim light, raw welts marking both wrists, made by a metal comb, the edge of a steel ruler or the back of a knife.

He’d told her how to do it properly if she was serious.

You didn’t need to persuade your parents to buy you a Mini.

You didn’t need to find a moonlit night and a long straight road. You didn’t need to tell your college friends you had gastric flu and you were going home. There were simpler ways. Kinder ways. Ways to make your intentions obvious.

‘Wrist to elbow, if you’re serious.’

That conversation was no accident.

If it hadn’t been for his benefit, then whose? Unless it was sleight of hand. In which case, what had she been so busy hiding in plain sight? That she was already packed and ready to run? Tom knew he was missing something. Not that it mattered much now, not really. But he’d been missing something.

They all had.

The Zil was already parked when Tom turned in under an arch, narrowly missing an old woman sheltering in its shadow. A militsiya guard stepped in front of the Ural, then stepped back at a shout from behind. A sergeant hurried over, hissed something at him and the guard took the bike as Tom climbed off, and was pulling it on to its centre stand before Tom even had time to remove Dennisov’s gauntlets.

They were behind the House of Lions, which the locals gave other, less kind names. The Zil emptied and Tom watched Sveta and her grandfather make for a narrow set of steps, while Dennisov strode over to meet him. Jerking his chin at the Ural, Dennisov said, ‘Okay?’

‘Crap engine. Hideous shocks. Steers like a dead cow.’

‘Soviet engineering at its finest.’

They smiled sadly at the lameness of the joke.

‘I’m sorry about Alex, okay? Really sorry.’

Tom shrugged, and Dennisov thanked him for riding the bike back, saying he’d have done it himself had his leg been up to it. Tom wasn’t sure the commissar would have let him. From what he could see looking in through the Zil’s rear window, the old man had been questioning Dennisov most of the way.

Questioning him intently.

Sveta’s grandfather growled something from the steps.

‘Be careful,’ Dennisov said. ‘He’s furious.’

‘With me?’

‘With everyone. He’s taking the girl’s death as a direct challenge.’

Storerooms and small offices, tired linoleum and institutional green paint – it was obvious this part of the House of Lions wasn’t meant to be seen by anyone important. Its corridors were rank with ghosts and memories. Every room they passed through had that mustiness found in houses where no one lived. Heavy radiators warmed only damp air. When they reached the bottom of a set of concrete stairs, Tom looked at his friend. ‘I’ll manage,’ Dennisov said shortly.

Hand to the rail, the Russian dragged himself up, the steel tip of his leg scraping each step in turn. Ahead of him, Sveta and her grandfather kept going for another two flights before halting on a landing.

‘Shouldn’t have ridden that bloody bike,’ Dennisov muttered.

‘Stump hurts?’

‘Bastard’s bleeding.’

‘Codeine,’ Tom said, dragging a packet from his pocket.

Dennisov swallowed a couple dry, shrugged and swallowed a couple more. When they came up behind Sveta, the commissar was saying, ‘We’ll get the best view from here.’ The window he’d chosen was tall and wide, and so badly fitted Tom could feel the cold wind before he was close enough to see the chaos below. The militsiya had cordoned off Ermolaevsky Lane, the road on the north-western edge of Patriarch’s Ponds, and the only vehicles inside were military. Beyond the wrought-iron railings, the snow-covered grass was thick with uniforms.

What looked like a tent turned out to be lacking a roof. They’d used a windbreak to cordon off the crime scene. Sveta’s grandfather was glaring down and as his gaze slipped sideways, he swore. It was fluent and brutal.

A British embassy Jaguar was trying to enter Ermolaevsky Lane.

As they watched, the driver climbed from his seat and began to remonstrate with the officer barring his way. A thin strip of police tape was all that divided their worlds. The militsiya man was shaking his head when Anna Masterton pushed open her door. It would be Anna, Tom thought. Turning back, she said something to someone inside the car and slammed her door hard.

The commissar said, ‘Fox. Deal with it.’

‘I’ll go with him,’ Dennisov said.

‘Take the lift then.’

At the lift doors, Dennisov stopped, looking back to check he was out of the commissar’s earshot. ‘You and Sveta…?’

‘Dennisov.’

‘Just wondering.’ The man’s face was unshaven, his eyes bloodshot, his hair cropped so badly it looked like tufts on a peat bog. His vest was the one he’d arrived in and it had needed a wash then. He was almost sober, though. A sheen glazed his skin and one eye was twitching. By anybody else’s standards, he looked terrible.

For Dennisov, he looked good.

‘You can tell me,’ Dennisov said.

‘This isn’t the time.’

‘When is?’ he demanded crossly. ‘For people like us?’

‘Like us?’

‘Broken,’ Dennisov said. ‘Buggered. Running on the wrong voltage. In need of new parts.’ He was reaching for the button when Tom stopped him.

‘You like Sveta?’

Dennisov nodded, something close to anguish in his eyes. Something that made Dennisov glance down and away so that Tom couldn’t see anything more. ‘Yes,’ he said, sounding sad. ‘I like her. But if you and Sveta…’

The truth came easily.

‘There is no me and Sveta.’

They made a strange enough pair coming out of the House of Lions for the militsiya guard by the tape to turn to see what had made the Englishwoman stare. When Sir Edward and Mary Batten climbed from the Jaguar it was to try to intercept Tom before he could reach Anna. They’d left it too late.

Dennisov straightened his jacket and Tom found himself rearranging the collar of the coat he’d borrowed. When the guard put up his hand, Dennisov produced a Party card from his pocket and flicked it open. The man’s salute was an instinctive, unthinking reaction.

‘Is it Alex?’ Anna demanded.

‘Anna. How do you know about the body?’

‘Is it Alex, damn you?’

‘We had a call,’ said Mary Batten, coming up behind her, ‘from a Welsh girl at the university. She was given a message for you. We’re trying to find out who asked her to pass it on. Now, unless you’re being intentionally cruel, is it Alex?’

Tom took a deep breath. ‘So I’m told. I’m really sorry.’

‘I don’t believe you. It can’t be. They wouldn’t…’ Sir Edward stepped around him, scowling as the guard blocked his way. The guard looked to Dennisov for instructions.

‘One only,’ Dennisov said. ‘It’s a crime scene.’

‘I’ll do it,’ Anna said.

‘Anna…’

‘I said I’ll do it.’ She didn’t look at her husband again.

Leaving Dennisov to handle Sir Edward, Tom led her into the park.

KGB officers watched them approach, their gazes suddenly flicking to the House of Lions as one of the heavy doors creaked open and Sveta’s grandfather appeared on the steps. He nodded abruptly to a thin man in a sable coat just outside the entrance to the windbreak and the man nodded back.

‘Is that Marshal Milov?’ Anna asked.

‘Yes,’ Tom said.

Anna’s eyes were ringed, her face hollow. She’d lost weight and new lines had etched themselves into her face. All hope had gone out of her. ‘Edward says we can’t trust you any longer. There’s no proof you haven’t gone rogue.’

When he put his hand on her arm, she jerked away.

‘Let’s get this done,’ Tom said.

This time, when he offered his arm, she took it, gripping his flesh so hard it hurt. Together they walked towards the windbreak hiding the scene from the skaters still laughing and shouting on the ice beyond. A loudspeaker bolted to a nearby tree deafened them with a waltz, soon replaced by something softer.

‘She looked forward to coming here,’ Anna said.

‘Moscow?’ Tom said, surprised.

‘To skate. Alex was good at skating. We used to do it back home.’

Did she realize that she’d already begun talking about her daughter in the past tense?

‘Major Fox,’ Tom told the man in the sable coat. ‘This is Anna Masterton, the British ambassador’s wife. We’re here with…’

‘I know,’ he said. He nodded to Anna. ‘Lady Masterton.’

His English was barely inflected, his suit immaculate. It wasn’t Soviet, unless those at the top of the Party had special tailors to go with their special shops.

‘I was in our embassy in London. A long time ago.’

‘A military attaché?’ Anna asked.

He smiled. ‘How did you guess? I am a general, these days, for my sins.’

She must have known what he was a general of…

‘If you’re ready?’

She’d been ready the entire time they were talking. She would never be ready. She made no answer. The man held back the canvas and Anna walked through, Tom following close behind. She stumbled, caught herself and Tom and the general hastily stepped back, both watching her fight for control.

A marbled body lay in the middle of trampled snow.

‘My God,’ Anna whispered. ‘What have they done?’

‘Frozen her,’ the general replied. ‘Probably bled her first.’

The killers or killer had also shaved her head and eyebrows and body hair before freezing her. She looked as perfect as a statue, her face turned slightly to one side, her upper lip slightly raised, revealing the tiniest sliver of teeth. She looked so young, so innocent, so unbearably naked.

Dropping to his knees, Tom touched her shoulder. Her skin was hard as glass and white as marble. Not caring that a Soviet general was watching him, he made the sign of the cross over her body. The action was too instinctive to be denied.

When he stepped back, Anna took his place, putting out her hand to touch the girl’s cheek. Tears streamed down her face.

‘Why would anyone do this?’

‘Anna…’

Holding up her hand to still him, she climbed to her feet without Tom’s help and turned to the general, casting one last look at the frozen girl.

‘That’s not my daughter.’ Seeing him glance at her tear-streaked face, Anna added, ‘I mean it. But she’s still somebody’s child.’

‘It looks like her?’

‘She,’ Anna said crossly. ‘She looks like her.’

‘You’re sure it’s not your daughter?’

‘Of course I’m sure.’

But you weren’t, Tom thought.

For a moment, right at the beginning, you weren’t sure at all.

And for all he’d worked at remembering Alex on his ride down, he hadn’t known it wasn’t her. ‘How alike are they?’ Tom asked. Alex’s mother took a moment to compose herself, and even then her bottom lip trembled and she rocked backwards and forwards, apparently unable to answer.

‘Anna?’

‘The mouth is right. The cheekbones. The nose too.’ She looked at the girl and shrugged sadly. ‘The body type, obviously enough. I don’t know about the eyes.’

Ice white, they stared blindly at the hard, grey sky.

The general said, ‘I would imagine those match too.’

‘But she has an old cut on her ankle and Alex doesn’t. And her wrists…’ Anna fell silent and Tom knew what she wasn’t saying. There were no scars on this girl’s wrists.

‘Why shave her head?’ Anna demanded.

The general answered before Tom could.

‘Because that way you had to look harder. It took you longer to be certain. Even then, perhaps for a second, you weren’t entirely sure. Her nakedness is to shock. The shaved head is to disquiet you.’ When he looked up and stepped back, Tom realized the commissar had come to join them.

‘To disquiet us all,’ the commissar said.

There was a fury in his eyes, a darkness that had been there when Tom described finding the dead children in the derelict house.

Tom trusted the commissar as much as he trusted any of the Soviets. But he wondered what wasn’t being said, and whether he trusted the commissar too much.

Whether he should trust him at all.