Moskva

54 Slaughterhouse Now

The Stalingrad Oblast Abattoir.

The words were carved into limestone above the building’s double doorway. The door itself was locked and Alex huddled in the recess while Tom rattled the handle, peering through a thick glass panel until he realized there was movement inside.

‘Get back,’ he said.

Grabbing Alex, he stepped away from the door.

An old woman came to the other side of the glass, peered through it and shook her head, vanishing the way she’d come. As an afterthought, she turned on the foyer lights at a switch by a door she shut behind her.

‘It’s still in use?’ Alex asked.

Tom shrugged, nodded towards a path that had obviously been cleared recently, because it wore only a thin skim of snow, and together they headed round the side of the abattoir towards a loading bay at the rear. Empty vodka bottles colonized one corner. Empty cans of local beer sat beside them.

A concrete ramp led to half a dozen sliding doors.

A landing stage was so dilapidated that one end had sunk beneath the water. A sign warned that no more than one cattle barge was to be unloaded at a time. The sign was as rusted as the landing stage was ruined. ‘Keep watch,’ Tom said.

Alex shuffled to the corner and peered round it.

‘See anyone?’

She shook her head.

Tom tried each sliding door in turn.

All of them were locked from inside, and he was about to give up when he saw a narrow door set into the side of the recess that held the doors he’d been trying. He’d already worked out that cows went through the separate doors, probably straight into individual killing pens on the far side. The narrow door was padlocked. Tom didn’t have a pick or any wire to make one but that was fine.

‘They’re here,’ Alex said suddenly.

‘Coming towards us?’ he asked.

‘No. They glanced this way. They’ve gone to the front.’

How long would it take them to find and follow their footprints? A minute? Less? Grabbing an empty beer can, Tom flicked open his lock knife and hacked out a triangle of metal, bending it over the back of the blade.

‘What are you doing?’ Alex asked.

‘Making a shim.’

He pushed the shim’s point into the outside of the padlock’s staple, and tore his frozen fingers turning it, but felt the staple pop free.

‘Hurry,’ he said.

Tom shut the door behind them, jammed it from inside and hoped that neither the general nor Kyukov knew there’d been a padlock or realized one was missing. When he looked round, Alex was staring in horror at the killing pens, which had floors that sloped and gutters for shit.

‘You’ve never seen one?’

Of course she hadn’t. Tom almost apologized, but she took it as a straight question and was shaking her head. Tom had. He’d worked for a month in Donegal, killing twenty cows a day. There were bigger abattoirs but his had been family-run, and their speciality was not looking too closely at the state of the meat.

Where you had an abattoir, you had…

Tom looked around him. The gates were old but well oiled, the blood drains were clear and the slopes swept. He had the feeling the building hadn’t been used for killing cattle in years; it felt too sanitary. But somebody was looking after it, and it was so neat that cows could be shipped in tomorrow, slaughtermen found and work begin immediately.

There would be a locked cupboard.

Beyond the slaughter floor, with its drains, was the inedible-offal room with its row of stainless-steel paunch tables. The layout was so familiar that Tom recognized it instantly. A door led off to a store with a metal cupboard at the far end, leather aprons hanging from hooks both sides and rubber boots in pairs along the floor.

‘Try those,’ Tom said, pointing to the smallest.

He was wrong about the cupboard being locked, though.

A dozen penetrating captive-bolt guns were racked in a row, with the blank cartridges needed to load them on a shelf above. Tom pushed the blanks aside.

‘What are you looking for?’

‘A pithing rod.’

‘What’s a pithing rod?’ Alex asked.

Tom decided not to explain. ‘Take one of the stun guns,’ he said.

Alex shook her head.

‘I can teach you how to use it.’

She took the thing reluctantly, looking horrified at its weight.

‘Too much?’ He meant the weight but when she nodded and said yes the tremor in her voice told him she was talking about something else.

He took the gun back.

‘Stay close then.’

She shot him a glance Tom recognized.

What really disconcerted him was that the overhead rails were running, hooks slowly circling through the empty rooms above head height. They moved almost silently, on a well-oiled track that had obviously been kept clean and free of rust. Looking through a glass porthole into a huge freezer room at the hooks disappearing into the distance, Tom remembered the girl at Patriarch’s Ponds, and the photograph of Beziki’s son, white as ice and naked on the snow. That door was locked.

All the same, he shivered.

‘What now?’ Alex said it like Tom would know, and he was reminded how young she was, relatively speaking. What now depended on General Dennisov and Kyukov, on Tom getting close enough to kill one or both, on him keeping Alex safe if she really meant it about Kyukov wanting to kill her.

He’d always known they’d kill him. Well, suspected it, maybe. But not her.

She was a kid, hungry, filthy and frightened. Why was Tom there if not to take her place on the altar? That was the deal. That was always the deal.

Build a world that fetishizes sacrifice and some will find themselves cast as victims, while others believe they have a right to wield the knife. Some days Tom found it hard to pretend the New Testament had won.

‘What now is I get myself a weapon.’

‘You have one.’ She nodded at the heavy stun gun.

Tom shrugged. You could put it to someone’s skull, or against someone’s chest, and the four-and-a-half-inch steel bolt would punch through bone or tissue. But that wasn’t really what he had in mind.

‘You really heard them say they planned to kill you?’

‘The weird one said that.’

It was meant to be the photographs for the girl.

That had been the general’s offer. Tom couldn’t work out what had changed. But if it had changed, then he needed a real weapon. Something that killed at a distance. Something to keep Alex safe.

‘Stay here,’ he said.

‘I want to come with you.’

‘Alex. I’m planning to kill someone.’

‘I’ll stay here.’ She looked around, at the door to the plant office, the door back to the processing room, the heavily insulated door of the freezer behind her. ‘Where do you want me to hide?’

In the end he walked her back to the storeroom, checking that each area on the way was empty before entering it, listening for noises ahead or behind. But all either of them could hear was the slight clatter of the moving rail and the low thud of the refrigeration plant.

Taking a second captive bolt gun from the cupboard, Tom opened its breech and loaded the heaviest blank he could find, snapping the hammer back. ‘I know you don’t really want to…’

She took it from him gingerly.

‘You’ll find front of the skull works best.’

Alex looked so sick he almost regretted saying it.

Tom took the key from outside the door and swapped it to the inside. ‘Lock the door behind me,’ he said. ‘Don’t open it unless you hear my voice.’

‘Take care,’ Alex said.

He listened for the click of the lock before heading for the processing room. The plant was huge, far larger than the one he’d worked in. Stopping outside a manager’s cubbyhole, he listened for voices, opening its door quietly, keeping to the side. It was empty, the desk neatly dusted, with an in tray bare of papers and a microphone in the middle.

Tom checked the next corridor for cameras but couldn’t see any.

That was something.

There were low-level lights on the walls and the whole factory had the feeling of an aeroplane at night. It was the steel, the low-level background noise and the taste of static. Static was better than the stench of blood and shit and urine that usually filled buildings of this kind. Tom needed to find Kyukov and the general. If he was lucky, he’d find them before they found him.

He wasn’t lucky.

The shot came without warning.

The really dangerous ones usually did.

It clipped the side of his skull and he lurched sideways, feeling pain flare along his temple, then training kicked in and he was retreating along the corridor, a hand clutched to his hair, his fingers sticky with blood.

‘Give up,’ Kyukov shouted.

Plant office or processing room?

The office had a door that locked, the processing room doors off.

Tom stumbled into the room with multiple exits and took up position beside the door, feeling his heart thudding in his chest. Wincing, he traced the bullet’s path along the edge of his temple. He was lucky. The bone felt fine beneath.

There was a prickling on the back of his neck and he turned, worried that General Dennisov had somehow got behind him. The room was empty though; the other doors were as he’d left them, almost shut.

He stood closer to the wall and readied the bolt gun. His one chance was to put it to Kyukov’s head and pull the trigger before he got through the door.

Steps advanced along the corridor and stopped.

From beyond the door came the sound of a man waiting.

Tom suddenly realized that he could see Kyukov’s reflection in the side of a steel boning table. And if he could see Kyukov, then Kyukov could see him. Not clearly, though. Not clearly enough to identify what weapon Tom carried, just enough to tell that he was armed.

Tom breathed in, steadied his heart rate.

He would be ready if Kyukov came through that door.

Only the man had begun to back away. His blurred reflection shrank as he retreated along the corridor, before vanishing altogether. Adrenaline almost drove Tom after him, but then he’d be walking into a one-sided firefight.

The crackle of static began a minute later.

Alex, a voice said. Can you hear me?

Looking up, Tom found the loudspeaker.

I know you can hear me.

General Dennisov’s English was good, his accent impeccable. But there was a flatness to his voice not caused by the factory’s primitive speaker system. Tom began to edge towards the storeroom, hugging the walls of the processing room and flicking his gaze between the other doors.

There was only stillness beyond.

The door into the hall leading to the storeroom had been locked. Very carefully, Tom let go of the handle. He needed to go round. But if that door was locked, then whoever locked it could be on the other side. Kyukov, most likely. General Dennisov had to be in an office or a control room, somewhere with a microphone.

Your friend’s injured, General Dennisov said.

There was silence.

Badly injured. And he’s cornered. You should give yourself up. We’ll let him live if you give yourself up.

‘I’m not,’ Tom shouted.

Could you hear that? He’s lying. He’s been shot in the head. There’s blood everywhere. We can still get him to a hospital though. Don’t you want him to live, Alex? Alex…?

Bastards, bastards.

He should never have left her behind.

Only how could he have got close enough to kill the general or Kyukov if she was with him? How could he kill them in front of her?

‘Don’t unlock the fucking door,’ Tom screamed.

He had no idea whether she could hear him.

If she could, she paid no attention. A minute later, the speakers crackled back to life. We have her, Fox. You know what to do. The wretched child had opened the door and given herself up.

For him…