Moskva

43 Yelena’s Offer

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

Tom looked at her.

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

‘Coffee?’ Tom asked.

‘English?’

‘Colombian…’

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

‘How can you live like this?’

‘Looks tidy to me,’ Tom said.

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

‘Soviet coffee is better,’ Sveta said.

‘As Dennisov would say… You have coffee?’

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

‘Dennisov has this,’ Sveta said.

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

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

‘Recognize the writing?’

‘No,’ Sveta said.

Her response was too instinctive, too fast.

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

‘You’ve checked?’

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

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

‘That worries you?’ Tom asked.

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

Looking at Sveta, Tom realized she meant it.

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

‘Where was he sent?’

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

‘Why so many moves?’

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

‘New camp. The old boss?’

She nodded.

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

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

This was granted.

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

A younger rival found flayed, whose skin never reappeared.

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

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

‘He’s escaped?’ Tom said.

He saw the shock on Sveta’s face.

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

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

Tom explained about the articles.

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

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

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

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

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

‘I imagine General Dennisov will be pleased.’

‘Why?’ Sveta said. ‘Would you want someone bat-shit insane as your self-professed best friend? I imagine he’s terrified of the man.’

‘He wasn’t behind Kyukov’s release?’

‘Gorbachev declared an amnesty for politicals. Kyukov qualified. By the time anyone realized he’d be on the list he was gone.’

Tom considered that.

‘Should you find him…’ Sveta said.

‘Your grandfather would like to know?’

‘My grandfather would like him dead.’ Sweeping up Kyukov’s file, Sveta thrust it almost angrily into her satchel, pushed back her chair and glanced instinctively at her reflection in the window before straightening her collar.

Tom was too early for the bar to be open for lunch, and the blind was down over the door and the windows so steamy their glass looked frosted. He hammered on the door anyway. Yelena allowed herself almost a smile when she realized who it was.

Glancing both ways along the concrete walkway, she hurried him inside and shut the door firmly behind her. ‘My brother’s out,’ she said. ‘He’ll be back soon.’

Tom had to fight the urge to ask where he’d been.

Dumplings boiled in a steel pan in the kitchen, the steam turning to condensation and running down the wall Tom leaned against, trying to stay out of Yelena’s way as she chopped onions and piled them into a bowl. ‘What are you making?’ he asked.

‘I’ll decide later.’ Having finished chopping, she glanced across at him. ‘Need vodka?’

Tom shook his head. ‘I’ve got a question.’

‘For me?’ she said. ‘Or for my brother?’

‘Three Sisters.’

‘Chekov? The play?’

‘It’s where Alex is being held.’

Yelena’s face was unreadable. ‘Beziki told you this?’ she asked finally.

‘Before he shot himself.’

‘Why didn’t you tell us this before?’

Because I was trying to work out if I could really trust you didn’t seem the right answer. Any more than I’m still not entirely sure was an acceptable rider to that thought. The problem was that he had to trust someone. The alternative was to reach a point where he wasn’t even sure that he trusted himself.

Outside, Dennisov rattled his key in the lock and the sound of a woman shouting and a child crying on the walkway entered with him, fragments of misery that ended the moment he shut the door and headed for the kitchen.

‘You okay?’ Dennisov asked.

‘He’s asking about Three Sisters.’

Coming to stand beside his sister, Dennisov wrapped his arm round her and hugged her tight until she leaned her head into his shoulder.

‘They’re rocks,’ he said.

Yelena nodded. ‘There’s a boathouse.’

‘With steps down from the Cormorant’s Nest.’

‘There are two sets of rocks,’ Yelena said. ‘The Big Sisters and the Little Sisters. The Little Sisters are below the Cormorant’s Nest… That’s a castle in the Crimea,’ she added. ‘A little castle.’

Dennisov nodded. ‘It used to be ours.’

‘What happened?’ Tom asked.

‘It became someone else’s.’

‘Beziki’s?’

‘Yes,’ Dennisov said. ‘Gabashville’s.’

Letting go of his sister, he retrieved a tatty school atlas from the box room and found a double-page spread of the Crimea, peering at it closely. When he couldn’t find what he wanted, he turned to the index and then back to the spread, trying to find the coordinates.

‘Give it to me,’ Yelena demanded.

Tom wasn’t even sure she looked at the page properly. But she jabbed her finger with such certainty that he went to stand by her side and peered at the jagged shoreline she indicated. There were few roads and no big ones. The colouring of the map and the tightness of the contour lines said she was pointing at cliffs.

‘How do I get there?’ Tom asked.

‘You don’t,’ Dennisov said. ‘Sebastopol’s a closed city. You’d have no chance of getting travel papers. Even if you got to Sebastopol, you’d have no way of reaching the house. Tell your embassy. Let them tell the police.’

‘The embassy aren’t taking my calls.’

‘You know…’ Yelena said.

‘No,’ said Dennisov. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘They won’t let him into the Crimea alone.’

‘They won’t let him in at all,’ Dennisov said firmly.

‘So he’ll need a guide.’

‘Yelena…’

‘We’ll take the train.’

‘You really think anyone will sell him a ticket?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘We’ll take the train.’

Yelena looked stubborn, Dennisov close to tears. Something unspoken passed between them and then it was her turn to put her arms round her brother, hugging him fiercely. ‘You said you’d never go back,’ he said forlornly.

‘I said I didn’t think I’d ever be able to. That’s different.’ She looked him. ‘You know it’s different. If I don’t go back now, I’ll know it was because I was afraid and that will be worse. Tom will pretend to be you.’

‘Yelena…’

‘I’m sad. So very sad I have to see places where I was happier. Places from when I was young. Who could deny me that?’

Her mouth twisted at the thought.