Trouble on the Heath: A Comedy of Russian Gangsters, Town Planners and a Dog Called Nigel

Chapter Nine

Anton Molotov hated this sort of job. For a start he wasn’t very good at them. The truth is he’d always intended to be a concert pianist rather than a gangster.

Becoming a gangster had all started as a holiday job. That nice Mr Grigori Koslov had offered him three weeks’ temporary work as a night-watchman. Anton Molotov had just started studying music at the St Petersburg State Conservatory.

The long vacation ran from the end of June to the beginning of September. When he found, at the end of the three weeks, that nobody said anything about leaving his holiday job, he stayed on. He was, after all, earning what seemed at the time like a fortune.

It was only in September, when he wanted to go back to the Conservatory, that he found things weren’t so simple. He was told that he had to stay on as night-watchman. When he enquired why, he was told that it was because he’d seen all the stuff coming in and going out.

Now, Anton had indeed seen all the stuff going in and out of the warehouse, but he hadn’t a clue what the ‘stuff’ was, and, being at the time more interested in music, he hadn’t bothered to find out.

On 1st September he did indeed return to the Conservatory, and didn’t report for night-watchman duty that night. The next day, two men came into the classroom and hauled him out, despite the protests of the teacher, and he was never allowed to go back.

“I cannot allow you, Anton Molotov, to wander around, talking to anybody you choose about what you’ve seen! You, who have been a witness to all our secrets!” That’s what that nice Mr Grigori Koslov had said to him. Anton wanted to point out that he didn’t know a thing about Grigori Koslov’s secrets, but he replied, “But I want to be a concert pianist! I want to study at the Conservatory!”

“I like you, Anton Molotov,” Grigori Koslov had said. “I will make sure you complete your studies.”

A few nights later, when Anton was on guard in the warehouse as usual, a truck drove into the unloading bay and two men threw out a rolled-up carpet. The carpet contained none other than Vadim Volkov, who was Anton’s teacher. It was he who had done all the protesting when Anton had been taken out of class.

Vadim Volkov, however, refused to speak to Anton, and sat sulking in a corner of the warehouse. Perhaps he blamed Anton for his current situation.

The next night, a lorry drove into the unloading bay. Several men in black balaclava helmets opened the back and hauled out a grand piano.

Vadim Volkov still refused to speak to Anton, but he sat at the keyboard and played for hours on end, ignoring his former pupil.

Some weeks later, when Grigori Koslov asked Anton how his studies were going, Anton explained how the teacher refused to speak to him.

The next night, Anton turned up at the warehouse to find Vadim Volkov seated, as usual, at the piano, but this time his head was missing.

From that moment Anton knew his fate was sealed. He was going to be a gangster. So he accepted his fate, because, after all, the money was pretty good. For the next few years, Anton focussed all his efforts on keeping in Grigori Koslov’s good books.

And that was how Anton came to be sitting in a car in a street in north London, England, instead of on stage at the Philharmonic Hall, St Petersburg.

In his pocket was a photo of some kid and its mother. His task was to grab the kid but not the mother. That was by no means an easy job. In his experience mothers could play up pretty rough, when you tried to grab their kids. It always surprised him how violent a mother can get.

Anton remembered one bungled job, where the mother had pulled a Walther P99 semiautomatic pistol on him. He had nearly had an accident which would have meant changing his underwear, because he knew any mother who carried a Walther P99 wouldn’t hesitate to fire it, if he tried to grab her kid. Still, that was back in Russia. That was the sort of thing one had come to expect these days. The fall of Communism had brought violence and organised crime, of which, of course, he realised he was part. Armed mothers were nothing new in Russia.

But this was England. People, especially mothers, didn’t normally carry semi-automatic pistols around with them. This should be easy – or easier.

Anton sat for some hours, wondering what sort of supper he would get when he’d finished the job. He had just settled on going for a Tex Mex, because there weren’t too many of them in Moscow, when he suddenly saw them. The mother was holding the boy’s hand, as mothers do, and the boy was jumping around like he was on a pogo stick.

Anton waited until they got nearer the car. Then he calmly and deliberately stepped out of the car and walked quietly up to the woman, produced a can of Mace pepper spray from his pocket and gave her a quick squirt in the face. He then grabbed the boy’s hand and whisked him into the car, while the mother fell to the floor gasping for breath.

Anton would be in South London, heading for Gatwick, by the time the mother recovered her senses.

Well, that was what was supposed to happen.

But it didn’t.

Anton had parked the car slightly wide of the pavement. The result was that, when he calmly and deliberately stepped out of the car, he caught his foot on the unusually high kerb and went sprawling across the pavement right at the feet of the mother and her son.

His can of Mace flew out of his hand and went spinning across the paving stones into the gutter.

Angela let go of Freddie’s hand, and knelt down to assist the man who had fallen in front of them.

“That was a heavy fall,” she said to him. “Are you OK?”

“Yes! Yes!” said Anton.

“I hope you haven’t twisted anything,” said Angela as she helped her would-be assailant to his feet.

“He dropped this,” said Freddie, and he handed over the can of Mace to his mother.

Anton made a grab for it, but was too late to stop Angela from reading the words ‘Self-Defence Mace Spray’.

She looked quickly up at the man she had just helped.